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Which one is the best Blog service?

Posted by Benedikt • 6/02/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Tags: blog, blog service, blogging, service

Everywhere you can get a free blog at different services. But which one is the best?
Few month ago i compared the big fours:

benediktrb.de/english/weblog/comparison-of-the-blog-services/

So at the end of my comparison I said that blogger.com is the best way you can start with. The registration is very fast and you can directly start to blog. You have many options, but not too much, so you can handle everything. For those who only want to write posts and maybe show some images it will be ideal.

But maybe i am not right What do you think is the best free blog service?

User Comments

6/02/07

iluvmonkeys2

blogger is indeed very easy to start with...i thought about moving mine to wordpress but when i tried to set one i up i got sooooo confused!

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6/02/07

Banjo3

Blogger is the only one I have used and I am very pleased with it. One thing that I would like to know is how some people remove the Blogger navigation bar from their blog. If you have a marketing blog or a kid friendly blog and the navigation bar is included then it is too easy to accidentally come across some hideous stuff on there.

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6/02/07

jphillips

wordpress, installed it and never looked back!

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6/02/07

Banjo3

Is wordpress free also? I thought I heard someone mention somewhere that it is a paid service. I am way too cheap to pay for a blog service but if it is free I will give it a try too so I can expand my horizon.

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6/02/07

Benedikt

i use wordpress, too. wordpress has a blogsoftware you can use on your own space or a free blog service. but the space is limited there. i think 50 mb .. u have to pay if you want some plugins or more space. but the XXXX.wordpress.com - Blog is for free.

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6/02/07

jphillips

Yep wordpress itself is free, just have to pay for your hosting (anywhere from 5-25 bucks for a shared hosting plan, to hundreds of $ for a dedicated server)

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6/02/07

BellaVida

I use blogger and it's super easy to use although it can be a pain when they run maintenance.

I did not like Microsoft Live and have not tried the other two.

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6/02/07

jphillips

I'm wondering something, since this post is about blogging platforms, why are people using blogger or wordpress.com or typepad.com, or any other as their blogging platform?

Ok, you can have your own domain name of course and map it to those free blogging services, which is cool, but why not get hosting and install wordpress instead? I'm just really wondering, that's all!

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6/03/07

Banjo3

What is the big difference, I mean the benefit of doing that? I'm just wondering. If Blogger is free and is hosted free what is the lure to get seperate hosting and then install Wordpress. Is it a traffic issue or is there something that I haven't considered but should consider?

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6/03/07

jerrydrussell

Banjo3, it's about control. In my case I pay for virtual Private Server hosting. It's like having my very own unix machine to play with. I control the software, the plugins, the themes, and the only time I'll need to worry about anything is if I start to get too much traffic, or when my images start to creep into my alloted disk usage. (at 4 gigs, I'm not even close to that yet...)

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6/03/07

Banjo3

Jerry, it sounds like you know your stuff. I am still in the category of just putting things on my blog and then begging people I know to go look at my blog and piddling around with some traffic generating on the internet. I would probably have a cow if I found out that I was getting too much traffic. That would actually be a welcome problem to have to deal with though.

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6/03/07

2WriteHands

I've only used Blogger. It's pretty flexible, and the changes they've made as far as adding labels and stuff--they're great. If you know a little HTML you can do a lot of stuff. I think there maybe other free interfaces that are easier to use if you just want a standard, pre-designed template. It depends how much you know about PCs, how much you want to pay, and how much time you want to devote to getting your words published.

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6/03/07

avmichaels

I've tried many...started at Blogger and can't say anything bad about the service, they've added some nice features lately...Wordpress.com and Livejournal are similar and also free. Also tried Typepad which might be the most user-friendly, but for the best features you have to pay a few dollars, I did a free trial and then ended up cancelling. I finally did Wordpress.org because I could set it up on my dotcom and get email, etc, plus TONS of free and fun plugins. You don't have to know too much techie stuff but you end up learning it anyway.

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6/03/07

werelax

I just setup my self hosted wordpress blog, you can do a lot of nice things with it. There are some low cost hosts $5-6 a month that set it up for you too. A huge range of plugins to do neat stuff.

There are a number issues, major if you are concerned about it is the difference in search engine friendliness. You can host image galleries. Lots of statistic options.

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6/03/07

pointlessbanter

I have a self hosted wordpress blog, I also blog on MySpace which is the easiest place to find an audience quickly.

I do really like using wordpress though.

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6/03/07

decarn

I will also want to start a wordpress blog. But since I'm new, having a free blog like blogger is a good place to start with.

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6/03/07

stocktube

blogger is indeed the fastest and the easiest for people who wants to concentrate on blogging but not too much about the technicality of it ... but don't expect great or cool "templates" as their templates simply sucks ... unless you know how to tweak & redesign it ...

if you want to have the greatest template ever created, then go for wordpress ...

the best combination would be to have your own domain name and host it somewhere else on your own but still use the wordpress templates ... with such, you're not at blogger's mercy should they decide to take you off from their platform ...

of course as a starter who do not know how long will this hobby of blogging will lasts (you should know better yourself), most people will goes to blogger for obvious reason ...

but if you're pretty sure you're gonna stay blogging for centuries, please note that when you want to monetise your blog later, your blogname.blogspot.com will have limitation simply because well-established advertisers would look at the domain-name as "not-genuine" ... e.g. azoogle will not approve your blogspot blog ...

also, most of bloggers realized after they've spent some quality time developing their blogspot and have a good pagerank, they're in dilemma of having their own domain as the pagerank will start from zero all over again should they switch over (just like me) ...

cheers ...

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1. 6/04/07
  
  decarn
  
  Hi Stocktube,
  
  Nice point about page rank. But I believe blogger has a feature that allows you to point to another site base on your old blogspot name. Of course your page rank of that new site will still start from zero but it makes your migration less painful.
6/04/07

juzx

So far I have tried 3 blogging services - Wordpress, Blogger and Weebly

I would have to say Wordpress provides the most flexibility, although themes and plugins are limited.

Blogger is an excellent choice for beginners and has a friendly user interface although you can't expect your blog to have the "look"

Weebly, a new AJAX-based blogging service, is the most user friendly, since it's basically drag and drop. However, since it's still new, there are hundreds of bugs, which irritated me and caused me to change to Wordpress.

Just my 2 cents...

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6/04/07

PetPortraitArtist

I started with blogger, then added wordpress to my website domain www.pencilportraits.com.au/blog . I much prefer wordpress in useability terms though. I also use pixelpost for my photoblog www.michellewrighton.com.

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6/04/07

ujwala

Both Blogger and Wordpress are great. A couple of advantages that Blogger has now that it has upgraded is that it allows you to add adsense, amazon ads etc unlike wordpress and it also allows you your own custom templates at no additional cost. So I'm not sure why juzx above says that you cant have the "look" with Blogger. I have blogs with both and am satisfied with both these services.

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6/04/07

stocktube

yes decarn ... i realize you can migrate your blogspot to your own domain but still host it in their server but still, your template and contents still at the mercy of google's blogger ...

remember to backup your contents, template and images constantly, just in case ...

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2/03/08

jackpayne

Blogger has worked fine for me. Easy, fast, just post and go. If you don't care about monetizing, as I don't, this setup is as good as any.

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5/23/08

octandra

I think Blogger easier than others like wordpress or blogsome, plus they now have this Blogger in Draft which make blogger more easier to use and had a lot additional contents for your blog. but i agree with BellaVida
that blogger can be sometimes suck when they run the maintenance, can they just do the maintenance without stopping the services for the blogger users ?

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5/23/08

stockhola

If you have hosting and your own domain name i suggest you go with wordpress its been fantastic for me so far. you can download it and install it to your server at wordpress.org takes about 5 minutes to install if that

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5/23/08

Bradley310

I use blogger and I'm a web developer. I could go with some of the others like Wordpress, but I was overly excited when I decided to start a blog and just went straight to blogger. It's been fine for me.

That could change some day.

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5/24/08

hakimtea

I love blogger! But I love wordpress too. I love both! ^_^

For beginer, blogger is great service and for profesional wordpress is certainly nomber one.

And I already posted about 58 free blog and hosting but in Indonesian language, here it is hakimtea.com/tips/58-layanan-blog-plus-hosting-gratis/

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