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Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: jay-ell on March 02, 2008, 02:38:41 am

Title: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: jay-ell on March 02, 2008, 02:38:41 am
So, I'm thinking of starting a blog.  I am hoping that it will be of interest to people outside my social circle.  I will want to post text and photos, and perhaps the occasional video.  I also want it to be Googleable. 

Anybody have suggestions as to what blog site might be best for me? 
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: melack on March 02, 2008, 03:27:15 am
I think wordpress has become the de facto blog format these days. You can get a subdomain with them for free, which is nice, but a lot of web hosts provide free wordpress installation. Dreamhost is what I have and it works pretty well.
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: wombat on March 02, 2008, 09:35:09 pm
I am for various reasons toying with this idea myself. How about Blogger? People who have blogs on Blogger - they seem to look OK. I don't want it to be too hard to have it be visually pleasing, since I'm not good at that kind of thing.

Also, of course, why not let Google run as much of my life as possible?
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: melack on March 02, 2008, 09:41:02 pm
I know how you feel, Wombat. My landlord works at google. She has it so I'm paying my rent through google checkout, which I can access by going to a blogger page with the payment link on it. I receive a confirmation in my gmail account. For posterity, she has set up a history of payments on a Google docs spreadsheet.

This is how everyone will live in the future, I fear.
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: theinevitable on March 02, 2008, 09:44:38 pm
On thursdays, when I have office hours (according to my Google Calendar), I send an email from my GMail account out to all the DJs in our Google Group, then chat with them on g-chat if they log on. Once they email me back, I log their requests in a series of Google Documents spreadsheets.

so, yeah.
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: wombat on March 03, 2008, 12:10:29 am
My landlord works at google. She has it so I'm paying my rent through google checkout

Wow. That's, like, not just an imaginary friend thing, you know?


Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: melack on March 03, 2008, 01:28:39 am
Wow. That's, like, not just an imaginary friend thing, you know?

Err... what?
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: Carlos del Vaca on March 03, 2008, 01:39:00 am
Do you already own a domain/have it hosted somewhere that includes a MySQL database?  If so, you can set up Moveable Type pretty easily.  That's what Ye Olde Foolblog of Olde runs on.
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: wombat on March 03, 2008, 01:41:22 am
Err... what?

I mean, Google may be able read my mind (to show me ads like "are you craving puppies,") and could cause me utter complete career discombobulation (if it lost the hundreds of messages I have saved in my email account,) and all sorts of other online things... but at least it hasn't gotten its tentacles into whether I have a roof over my head.
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: wombat on March 03, 2008, 01:47:31 am
Do you already own a domain/have it hosted somewhere that includes a MySQL database?

Unfortunately this is all CHING CHONG WING WONG.

I am playing around with Blogger. It seems that I basically have to hack the assembler code to change the color of the text for the post titles. 
Title: Re: Blog hosting -- advice?
Post by: wombat on March 03, 2008, 09:21:05 pm
OK, to be fair to Blogger:

In the old version, you had to hack the assembler code to change fonts and colors. The new version has a user-friendly interface for normal people.

You are supposed to get the new version if you sign up for a new account. But I got the old version. Maybe because I signed up with an existing gmail address?  But you can convert, and I realized this at a point where I didn't lose too much of the stuff that you lose if you convert versions.

So, anyway, now it's all point and click and drag and such.