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| Moving Homes |
| 07.13.04 (1:15 pm) [edit] |
Very soon I will be announcing that this blog will be moving. tBlog was a good place to start, but the control over my blog is limited (you can see how ugly it is!!) and the only entry interface is cut and paste on a text box on the webpage. Not very efficient. So I have been looking for another host and I thought I would share my notes with you, in case you are looking for a blogsite yourself.
Two things about these notes, first they are very rough...they really are my actual notes as I went along. Second they don't cover the entire world of blogging, just looking for a good, free, place to torture people with my little writings. So with that in mind, let's get started.
Before we get started, the first blog tool you must know about is: w.bloggar (www.bloggar.com). This is a Windows 9x/2k/XP front end for many blogging softwares, it allows you to edit and upload posts with a desktop application, rather than cutting and pasting on some text editor box. In fact, it looks exactly like a decent text editor, which it is. Unfortunately, although it supports many types of software, not many of the bigger or free hosts use it. The two big exceptions are Blogger and LiveJournal -- W.Bloggar works great with them. But for sites like Xanga, Pitas, Mindsay and yes, tBlog, you are still in the cut and paste world. The software is supposedly in beta, but it works fine for me.
The contenders:
ExpressBlogs.com
http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/" title="http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/" target="_blank"http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/
ExpressBlogs is an Irish company which is a point in it's favor. It is running b2Evolution which is supposed to be great, but so far I haven't seen it. Can use the w.bloggar interface which is a plus. b2 seems to have no templates or anything built-in like the other blogging systems, or at least EB doesn't have them available. The server seems impossibly slow so far. On the plus side it looks like it hosts images with no problems whatsoever. On the other hand w.bloggar doesn't connect and the interface is horrible, probably out.
BlogDrive.com
Seems to have a 100KB(!!) limit on picture uploads. Not quite what I am looking for! Doesn't work with w.bloggar so it out.
Pitas.com
http://www.pitas.com/" title="http://www.pitas.com/" target="_blank"http://www.pitas.com/
Too stupid for words.
Blogger
www.Blogger.com
I have an account and a blog setup, works with W.Bloggar, so I will keep it for now and update it for additional traffic.
JournalSpace
Seems to a paid/free service does host images, does use w.bloggar, it is live journal based.. Nice look and stats. A definite contender. But then the free trial period (of about 5 minutes) ended and it looks like every other livejournal client.
Bloty Journals
Bloty is a livejournal client and w.bloggar seems to work fine with it...however, no pictures and no delete! I'll look at this one again.
Live Journal
http://www.livejournal.com/" title="http://www.livejournal.com/" target="_blank"http://www.livejournal.com/
I signed up for a real live livejournal. It is a free account and doesn't look good so far, but I can update it from w.bloggar and maybe get some extra traffic. The biggest pain in the butt for livejournal clients is that the interface is maddeningly split. You have control center where you can fire up the editor and such or you can look at your weblog. From within the weblog there is no way to get back to the control center! Trying to delete an entry is madness :-)
Web Crimson
http://www.webcrimson.com" title="http://www.webcrimson.com" target="_blank"http://www.webcrimson.com
The E-zine portion of the site really has a nice layout with article summaries and such, but there doesn't seem to be offsite editing supported and no image support. Maybe not. On the other hand the e-zine layout is much more professional than anything else I have seen, so I might just mess with it.
Free-Conversant
Isn't really a weblog site, but rather sort of a webpage generator, or maybe interactive information portal. It looks very, very powerful and I may move in this direction eventually. I will also think about setting up a website for ProgressWausau or ProgressWisconsin. If I can download a complete set of docs, I will look at them.
DK3
I signed up for free hosting here and got a portal: http://TheCrashPad.portal.dk3...
but get nothing but php errors and such. So far useless.
GreatestJournal
http://www.greatestjournal.com/" title="http://www.greatestjournal.com/" target="_blank"http://www.greatestjournal.co...
Another Livejournal powered site. It is completely free so most of the features are activated. It still is not easy, as the LJ software is so unfriendly. I might update this one since I can through w.bloggar.
jroller
This was actually the most promising site. Host software written in Java. Unfortunately, after I signed up, the site would not let me log in. I'll check back later.
What we have so far:
Blogger
LiveJournal
Greatest Journal -- LJ Client
Bloty -- out
Free Conversant -- a real webpage!
WebCrimson -- cut and paste
Jroller (if I can log in!!) -- maybe out
LiveLog
The also rans...(mostly cause I couldn't use w.bloggar)
http://www.blogeasy.com/" title="http://www.blogeasy.com/" target="_blank"http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.20six.co.uk/" title="http://www.20six.co.uk/" target="_blank"http://www.20six.co.uk/ (really close, this one!)
http://www.blogstudio.com/" title="http://www.blogstudio.com/" target="_blank"http://www.blogstudio.com/ (only 100K for free accounts...)
http://www.ujournal.org/" title="http://www.ujournal.org/" target="_blank"http://www.ujournal.org/ (another LJ service)
http://www.livelog.com/" title="http://www.livelog.com/" target="_blank"http://www.livelog.com/ (registered here, very nice look...)
http://www.weblog.co.nz/" title="http://www.weblog.co.nz/" target="_blank"http://www.weblog.co.nz/ (5mb wordpress account, signed up to use wp)
http://www.blogontheweb.com/crashpad/" title="http://www.blogontheweb.com/crashpad/" target="_blank"http://www.blogontheweb.com/c... powered by some microsoft crap, but I have to admit it works good...cut and paste only though
http://blog.interbaseusa.com/" title="http://blog.interbaseusa.com/" target="_blank"http://blog.interbaseusa.com/...
http://journurl.com/" title="http://journurl.com/" target="_blank"http://journurl.com/ Looks promising, uses w.bloggar interface
http://www.ipadder.com/" title="http://www.ipadder.com/" target="_blank"http://www.ipadder.com/ all open source, looks promising, signed up, but now it won't let me log in...
http://www.electricdiary.com/main.aspx" title="http://www.electricdiary.com/main.aspx" target="_blank"http://www.electricdiary.com/... (wouldn't let me sign in!)
http://www.freeonlineblogs.com/" title="http://www.freeonlineblogs.com/" target="_blank"http://www.freeonlineblogs.co...
http://mobynuke.net/" title="http://mobynuke.net/" target="_blank"http://mobynuke.net/ (here and cafelog, I just could not create an account)
http://ilohablog.com/" title="http://ilohablog.com/" target="_blank"http://ilohablog.com/
http://blogpage.com/UserPage/" title="http://blogpage.com/UserPage/" target="_blank"http://blogpage.com/UserPage/... (signed up, but editor did not work)
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posted by: ynat smido (reply)
post date: 12.29.06 (2:06 pm)
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