Which is the best Blog site to use?

Hi Andrew, It really depends what you are looking for. Do you want something that is free? Something that has hosting built in or you can do yourself? Easy to use or highly configurable? Etc. You can check out mine over at www.wonderosity.com its a wordpress blog I'm hosting myself (you can have wordpress host it for free at www.wordpress.org) and I'm infamous for having too many widgets and gadgets in my sidebar. Typepad, Blogger, and Livejournal are probably the other three most popular options. Give me a call as I do consulting on this if you are intersted in hearing some more or getting help getting started. 1-877-I-AM-GAME Cheers, Leif

I use Wordpress too and host it myself as well. Leif mentioned that Wordpress hosts for free but he gave you www.wordpress.org when it should be .com (for the free hosting that is). The .org site is where you can download the code of Wordpress (free also) to use on your own site.

Either way there are tons of free theme templates you can use or if you host it yourself you can change the blog theme to fit your website look and feel. You'll need to know xhtml and css and php.

If you get confused the .org site has lots of help info.

Best regards, ~Danita

buy a url from namecheap and get Dan to set you up with hosting here.. he installs Wordpress for free for you.

If you would like your template to be customized talk to Andrew Sengul about that.. he's done a real nice job on bizibeefloral.com ..

Alternately, you could get a free account at wordpress.com ..but in the long run i think you'd be happy having your own URL and having more control with your customization options. The only way to get this is with a server install.

I have Wordpress ( I did not set it up) and I think its hosted through my website.

For a non-techie like me I find it very easy to use! www.countrymeadowsoaps.com/blog

Wordpress is by far the best blogging tool to use. For a business blog, SEO and branding are important, so you'll want to host it on your own domain. Wordpress can even be used to put together static webpages as well as blogs, acting as a simple and user-friendly content management system.

I'm helping Justin to put his site together using Wordpress, and I'm also helping William Maderas out with his blog. Just message me if you'd like to know more.

Where my websites are hosted there is a back end utility called cpanel. Through the cpanel I was able to install WordPress into directories of my website of my choice very simply. Your host company should be able to easily walk you through the steps of installing WordPress into your site's directories...

Not sure if that helps at all...

A.

I use Typepad through Moveable Type. Wordpress was nice, but I'm not a techie, and I liked the clean user interface and simplicity of the Typepad platform. It also has good integration with Technorati, Feedburner, and other tools you can use to drive traffic.

I liked Wordpress, but it felt like too much work to make it look good.

Oops, thanks for the correction about wordpress.com being the site where they host your blog. (: Good point Cheri on part of the choice being how tech-friendly one is and thus how much a simple UI plays a role. -Leif

Hi Andrew. I hope this is not a blatant plug for my own blog but I recently did a post on this subject. You might check this out for some advice. Good luck and let me know if I can help! http://www.quickstartseo.com/what-is-a-blog/

I've been using WordPress since Dan recommended it two years ago. I've had to ask for help with it, but for the most part it can be figured out.

Right now I'm expanding the use of the Pages feature to include events at the office, a recommended reading list, and soon an outline from which a series of presentations will come. Also, I think I'll create a page entitled History and Experience of some such.

There are some irritations but it's been good considering I only have time into it.

DD

My vote goes for "Wordpress". After some little familiarisation it's pretty easy to use and have lots of features as well...

Since Andrew is putting the blog on an already established website Wordpress is the way to go.

However, for anyone else who does not already have a website I want to put in a strong vote for

           [**TYPEPAD**](http://www.typepad.com)  

If you have a domain name but do not have a website you can map your domain to your Typepad blog. In addition to the reasons Cheri mentioned above Typepad has so many features you can almost set it up to look like a regular website though it takes a little bit of work. They have great spam control for comments. I like that I do not have to take care of that. I find it very easy to use and it has a good Help Knowledge Base. Lastly there are some techies who are posting some coding hacks so if you do even fancier things if you are a coder. But as someone who just wants the thing to work (!) I have found it very straightforward!

I am redoing my blog to function a lot more like a regular website. It is under construction at the moment and probably will not look like much until the first week or two in January but here is the link Vivid Ideas Inc.

Nice reading the posts ~ tati's

Great question!!Don't we all want to know?? I have used Typepad for my fine art gallery/blog. It has given me migraines, and I dread each update. I chose it initially because I thought it had the most elegant templates and options for customization. The help is great if you can wait 24 hours for each reply and then another two days for them to realize that they really haven't answered your question and give you a real solution.

This is the kind of maddening thing that comes up (and yes there is a geek factor.) I wanted to enable subscriptions to the RSS feed via Feedburner and Facebook. Countless times I tried to register my blog and got the same error message. It took three full days of correspondence with typepad technical for them to really get my question and answer it: It turns out if you compose a post in Word or Outlook or any Microsoft program and paste it into your blog it will not work with the Feedburner platform (ie. it sabotages the blog subscription process.) I had pasted just one paragraph in from Outlook a year ago, and it had one four letter piece of code that had to be corrected. The Typepad folks "combed the code" and fixed the html. This is not for civilians.

Soooo I am thinking of migrating to Wordpress, which I am told is much friendlier. (Is it??) You are supposed to be able to pack the whole blog up from Typepad and put it on a container ship and send it over to WordPress. I hope it works!

Iskra http://www.iskrafineart.com

I just sait through a blogging presentation by Bob Dunn with Cat's Eye. He is here on Biznik and he did a great job of explaining the concept of Blogs and where to go to make them work for you. He has another event coming up. I recommend you contact him for some tips

I'm new to this forum so I'm not sure who this Dan is that I keep hearing about, but I recently purchased a domain name from namecheap and want to get it up and running with wordpress. From what I've read above this Dan person likes to help people like me who are newbies in the web-hosting world. How can I get in touch with him?

Thanks for all the comments. I am also ready to set up my blog and was wondering which was the best one to use. Thanks everyone.

I still like WordPress... and they just made a bunch of upgrades so there shouldn't be any big changes for a while.

David, search "Dan McComb" and you will find the Dan every one keeps talking about... you have no idea how funny that is (LOL).

To make a long story short, I would recommend WordPress over Typepad. We have blogs in both and the main reason I like WP is it's versatility in both themes, widgets and plugins, especially if you are using it on your own server.

Typepad is okay though. We have found it fairly intuitive, but it does have some restrictions.

If you are in the beginning phase, I would recommend WordPress, only because migrating a Typepad blog to WP is challenging and time consuming. Also depends how long you have had the blog. Moving over posts is fairly easy using export/import, but where the challenge comes is if you have used graphics, correcting those links. Also if there are links you have created, on other sites, or others have to your blog posts, again you have a challenge, as most times those links will now end up on a 404 page, "error, page not found". There are ways to fix this, but it's not easy. And without going on and on, best to start with what you want to stick with in the long run!

WordPress is an amazing environment and would cost tens of thousands of dollars to create a similar platform for a proprietory site.

With the availability of Plug ins and Widgets, WordPress can do just about anything. It is totally revolutionizing the Internet and the Web Development industry. It gives power back to the user instead of allowing 'techies' to blind you with science.

We are shortly going to be putting on some WordPress events. With a little help, even a total novice can create something surprisingly sophisticated. With expertise, WordPress can create a total 'killer' site. We'll demonstrate what can be achieved when you really know what you're doing with WordPress.

Just to reinforce that point... WordPress is much much more than just blogging software. It is great for blogging but it is also a complete multimedia development tool.

You can have a blog on WordPress.com but also download the technology to your own site/domain. For an example of how this works, take a look at a site we're currently working on: http://www.experience.autotrimseattle.com/

WordPress will change the way websites are created and that's a fact.

Christine has a good point. If I had it to do all over again I would probably have ONLY a WordPress blog and not bother with my office website. I only keep it now because it has such a fantastic enewsletter that comes out each month with no help whatsoever from me - people love it and they remember our office.

DrD

Christine, I totally agree with you on WordPress. It's amazing what it can do. WordPress has already changed the world of websites. My best advice is you can create a really nice site yourself, but people need to be aware also that once you get them there, functionality and well-written content is what will keep people there and make the sale.

I have been doing WordPress Chatters for sometime which pulls out some great discussion and will be doing my second, intensive WordPress Simplied workshop that teaches you how to get the most of out WordPress on July 14th.