Tag: blog platform

More about blogs and homepages

A while back I posted about blogs, social networks etc and I suddenly realized that those old posts have become a little dated. New communities have shown up and others have disappeared. So I thought I’d tell you a little about my favorite sites online and if you’re interested, I hope you’ll enjoy it, or maybe even learn something. Of course, it’s always possible that you know more about this than I do and in that case, you’ll be disappointed.

1. Blogs, homepages

What’s the difference between a blog and a homepage? Well, you might say that everything you can find online are homepages, consisting of different things. Generally, a homepage is a static webpage (or a set of webpages) that aren’t updated very often. A blog is a sort of online diary, but can also be a homepage. The main difference is that a blog is usually updated a lot more often than a homepage.

If you’re interested in getting a blog (or a homepage) you’ll need to decide if you want to pay for it or not. Usually, if you’re looking for something that doesn’t cost anything, you’ll have to accept ads. They can be very discreet or extremely annoying and everything in between. I have a theory that some younger people (teenagers) actually prefer ads on their blogs. Pretty fashion photos anyone? Just remember that ads can feature anything, the company behind them might try to sell things that don’t have anything to do with your blog.

If you want more choices about your blog – themes, plugins etc, you’ll need to get webspace. There are providers of free webspace, but I wouldn’t recommend them. If you want free webspace, consider one of the blog sites below. It’s easier and your blog will look nicer. I’ve been lucky enough to find a web hotel that is extremely cheap, but offers very good quality. It’s also super easy to start a WP blog. (This is the kind you get from the WordPress.org site. You download the software then upload it to your web space (and you’ll need databases). Databases are extremely complicated, but I’m proud to say that my sister knows how to set them up. I don’t. If you don’t want the hassle, get web space like ours where you just press a button and the site does the rest. Otherwise, choose one of the free blog providers below.

If you’re going to have your own blog, you’ll want your own domain name. It will cost you a bit but not that much. I know some people buy them up like candy and keep them on speculation, hoping they’ll go up in value, but as far as I know very few people have become rich hoarding domain names. It’s a bit complicated setting the domain name up, but many registries can help, or your web hotel might.

If you don’t want to pay, there are several good blog providers to choose between. Different blog platforms are good for different things.

One of my favorites is WordPress.com, where you can get a free blog. The people behind WP claim they’re displaying ads, on the basic account blogs, but I haven’t seen any, so if they exist, they must be extremely discreet. You can also upgrade, and get more features. I haven’t tried that myself so I can’t tell you anything about it. WordPress is (as you might guess from the name) very good for text posts. You can also post photos and other media, and that works fine, but if you mainly want to post media files, then you might want to consider another provider. More about that later.

Another blog platform is TypePad. LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, Dreamwidth, Vox and TypePad are based on that. These are also very nice. You can do pretty much everything you can do with WordPress, but you don’t get categories or pages – static pages that can turn your LJ (or other journal or blog) into a homepage. There are workarounds, so, again, the difference isn’t that great.

What I like most about LiveJournal are the communities and the people. Don’t get me wrong, there are great people on WordPress too and you might get to know them if you comment on their blogs and they begin to comment back, but it’s not quite as easy to meet new friends there.

InsaneJournal and Dreamwidth are pretty much the same as LJ but newer. I haven’t managed to get to know any people there yet (except for ones I already knew from LJ or elsewhere).

Vox is a bit different from the others – it’s a media blog. That means it’s especially good at displaying media – images, movies etc. Text posts work fine too. There are also groups (not communities) but I haven’t made any friends there and haven’t seen any activity in the ones I’ve joined, so I can’t tell you about them. You get quite a lot of storage space for your media files, but there’s a limit per month. I’ve never reached that limit, but then I have a special photoblog (on Tumblr – more about that later).

TypePad is marketed a microblog, but I wouldn’t call it that. It’s supposed to be a basic version of their premium blogs. To me it’s like any other blog. You get categories, tags and a sort of links list (which you get on all the others too). It’s a bit like Vox, in that it’s easy to post media files (but it’s easy on all the free blog platforms).

Blog sites

Next lesson in my computer/internet school. This time I thought I’d cover blogging sites. When I first heard of blogging it seemed alien to me. Then I tried it and couldn’t make it work, but eventually, I got the bug. Now I can’t imagine not blogging when I feel inspired. Of course, blogging requires a blog site, or software and a website and most of all a blog platform.

My favorite blog platform is WordPress. Yay! I absolutely adore WordPress. WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

The difference is that WordPress.com is a sort of web hotel, where you get your WP blog hosted for free. It does mean you get fewer choices in blog themes, plugins, widgets etc. You might also have trouble directing your domain name to your WP blog. Domain name – well, properly that should be covered in a separate post, one about homepages, webspace and, well, domain names. I’m not going to do that though. This is it. Blogs and homepages covered in one single blog post.

The reason for that is that today, most people hardly know what a homepage is and have trouble creating one. Even as late as a year ago, I was stubbornly sticking to my homepage and wanted to program it myself, using an editor, naturally. I’m not that good with html programming. Then it hit me – why should I do all the ground work, when my ‘thing’ is writing, primarily, and to some extent, photography?

I have come to the conclusion, that while I would love to make a blog theme 100 % as I like it, there are so many themes out there, that I can be pretty content with one someone else made.

Anyway, back to the domain name. It doesn’t have to be that expensive, if you want one. There’s no reason why you should need one, but if you do want one, it’s easy to get and won’t cost you too much. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. When isn’t there? It could be a bit tricky, configuring it. I’m afraid I can’t help you there, but there should be help available online.

You can also get a domain name for free. It won’t be a ‘real’ domain name, but it will shorten your URL and make it easier to remember. Uni.cc and cjb.net are the ones I’ve tried. Both work fine.

For a homepage, you’ll need webspace and if you don’t mind ads, you can get some for free. If not, there should be web hotels that have reasonable prices. My family and I are lucky enough to have found one that doesn’t charge much but offers a lot of space.

You’ll also need a web editor. There are some available online for free. I can’t tell you how good they are, because I haven’t tried them, but I’ve been told they’re quite good. Finally, you’ll need an ftp program, unless your webspace offers a web based file upload option.

Let’s get back to blogging. You’ll still need webspace if you decide to get your blog software from WordPress.org and if you like, a domain name. The upside is you get to choose any theme you like and you can get plugins and widgets.

The main advantage of both WP types is the ease of updating, editing etc. It’s a breeze compared to editing in a web editor. That’s why I decided in favor of a blog, rather than an old-fashioned homepage.