You’ve discovered blogs; now you want one — but How? Where?

If you already have some technical skills, and want to host your own site, you have lots of options that I will not be exploring here. Software I often see mentioned includes Textpattern; Moveable Type (by the folks that bring us TypePad); WordPress;  Radio UserLand; and Drupal. You can find a chart comparing more blogging software at Asymptomatic.net, here.

For those of us who want something easy, free or relatively inexpensive, and hosted by someone who knows more than we do, there is an abundance of choices:  Blogger; LiveJournal; Tripod Blog Builder; Bravenet; Xanga; and my own choice, TypePad. There are many, many others — see a list of free ones at diarist.net.  PC Magazine did a review of blogging tools that you might find helpful.

Most of these services have a list on their front page of "recently updated weblogs" — this is a good starting point to cruise around and see what it is possible to do with their software. For this purpose, it is best to try to ignore the actual content of the blogs you are perusing, and just focus on structure and design. It will also give you a good sense of whether you can live with the advertising that comes with free blogs, or are willing to pay for the service to avoid it. Usually you can begin with the free service, or a trial period, to see how you like the service.

(I’m told that it is possible, if one has the technical skills, to "hide" the advertising banners on free sites. It may be, but it strikes me as unfair — that advertising is, after all, what supports the blogger’s ability to use the software and hosting without charge.)

Based on my own experience, I advise that you consider your first efforts an experiment; I had no idea when I began that I would want to do so much with my blog — that I would want pictures, and toys, and my own domain name.  Give yourself a few weeks to play around before committing yourself to any one service, or a name for your blog.  Try Googling the name you choose to see how many others chose the same name (there are 96,100 results for "Ponderings", just as a random example . . . )

This blog, for instance, began simply as a place for me to play with new skills, and is evolving into a blog to help others who are now where I was at the beginning of my web journey. If there are topics you would like me to tackle, let me know!

Next (or soon, anyway): Blog Directories.