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

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.