Blogging Options
Got a comment asking about my move to this site from my old one. The two look more or less identical. The software for the two isn't that different. Neither is perfect but certainly are above adequate. My reason for change was support more than anything. GoDaddy was pretty much proof that when you go cheap you get cheap. I'm now with justhost.com which is a true hosting setup.
Blogger or LiveJournal would have also been a viable choice. All of the above will let you blog away. So why go to a hosting setup? A host like mine is actually the same thing you'd get as a user on a Unix server. There are even free ones out there you can experiment with. If you are Unix knowledgeable to some degree you can operate as a shell account.
My shell account came with a lot of installed software. It made it easy to configure mail and the blog software. They also provide the Internet services that make pokerperambulation.com appear to the world. You have a lot of services that may or may not add to your fun. I have mail accounts; although, the only one active is webmaster at the url. I can also transfer my other address (prevo.org) to this account if I wish. It be a very small fee. The account itself was under $100 for a year and that's basically unlimited storage and bandwidth. I could use it for storing some things I wouldn't want to lose if my system tanked. I could start a forum or share files. I'll include a lot a a part of the view I have of my hosting services.
You'll see they aren't that far from when you click on an application on your desktop. It is actually a desktop providing a large collection of programs already stored on your server that you can use as you see fit. That includes the WordPress software I use for the blog along with several other blogging software choices. Setting it all up is relatively painfree.
Having setup the software for the blog, I joined the support area for WordPress which is free. There were the themes and plugins to allow some easy customization. Most of that is free but there are themes that are fancier or super configurable that come with a fee. The theme I'm using was free and has about all I need. I can have ads, links and all that good stuff in my two column setup. Theme are varied and you can do three column or make it look like a newspaper and be as creative as you wish. When you've installed a theme in the host software, you can start blogging. You do that from a screen referred to as Dashboard. It lets you configure things to customize the view. It looks like this:
Here is the common area that lets you manage all the rest. You can drag things around and colapse or add to the page. It's also the path to posting and that's what is opened on the left.
Each of those blue boxes expand to show the services they provide. When I click on Add New this screen closes and I have a text editor with the normal things you can do in preparing your blog. I got used to writing offline and copy and paste to that editor. It had some teething pains but works well enough now. But many just write in the editor provided.
You've got it going but back at the WordPress site there's more available. They also have a collection of plugins. The Askimet one you see at the top handles spam and it has done a good job of it. One of the things I missed in the previous software was that I had to manage comments. Here I have configured things so that once you've posted and I approved you, your comments will immediately appear. With Askamet, it is even more autmated and has caught all the spam that shows up and sent it to another directory where I can review/kill at my leisure.
Another one collects stats. I also use Google Analytics and Site meter. That is a bit of overkill but it is fun and humors me without embarrassing myself. Here is the theme manager which will show you the WYSIWIG interface to adding the sketch of myself and some pimpage in the theme space.
Is all this something I'd recommend to you? Not really – at least without knowing more about your goals. It has bells and whistle galore. You can release the inner geek or artist in such an environment. But the writing is the same in all of them and the basics are there in all the package choices given bloggers. You are more the captain of your fate in the environment but do you really want the extra work. If you call it work instead of fun, I'd probably say no.
ADDENDUM:
If you click on any of the graphics, you can see the larger version. You'll note they are stored on Picassa. There is a graphics storage setup provided by the host that I could use. This I find an easy way to do it. Nothing diabolical; just sloth.
P.S. If you should decide to get a host account, you can see in the first graphic that I can get a few bucks if you choose justhost.com and give this site as the referral. I would recommend it beside the obvious graft coming my way. They've got good support and all the bells and whistles. I see fast page loads and all the stuff you should expect with the account. My bandwidth and storage are unlimited for just the base fee. The price was also as low or lower than the others I looked at. Didn't do a whole lot of that though.
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Good information, thanks.