Which Blog? – Hosted

When this site was offline for a few weeks, I considered changing the blog system behind it, this my guide to the best of the hosted blog engines.

If you haven’t decided whether to used hosted or self hosted read: Bloginners: What do I need

If you want to use a hosted blog, then read: Which Blog? – Self Hosted

The Hosted Ones

If you only want a blog for writing general musings on the day, or about one subject; if you’re looking to share some info or have an outlet on the world for your mind then by all means use a hosted account on one of the blogging platforms.  I’ve had a look at the following:

LiveJournal

Oh god, why would you bother?  LiveJournal is horrible to look at, fairly unintuitive to use and relatively uncustomisable in comparison to some others.  Bear in mind that even if you love using LiveJournal, they are horrible to read, properly unpleasant, and this will mean that only your friends will bother.  Behind your back your friends are conversing about how they hate looking at your blog.

In addition to this, the pages aren’t particularly great for search engine friendliness, so don’t look forward to dominating the rankings with a LiveJournal.  As this link proves, it ain’t great: Google search for Questionable Content Blog.  The first result is the RLBlog, a blog hosted by Wordpress on the same domain, but actually a bit of an extension of the original webcomic.  Admittedly this is partly down to the way that the guy doesn’t call it a ‘blog’, but a Google for ‘XKCD Blog’ will find his, and he doesn’t refer to it as a blog either.

Blogger

When it started, Blogger was the most straightforward of straight and forward things, with a few simple settings and limited library of templates which were suitably bland so as to not affect your readers too much.  Since it’s acquisition by Google, Blogger has developed some really nice features.  Your friends who use GoogleMail/Calendar/Analytics, Picasa, Blogger, Feedburner or any others of the 9,576,034 applications Google peddles to the public, can log in to your blog and be identified without any bother using their Google ID.  Other pluses include built-in support for Google Adsense (if you fancy violating your readership for some ad cash) and instant (Yes instant) addition to Google’s search results upon publication.  The absolute quickest way to get a blog post onto search results, is to use Blogger.

Wordpress.com

The hosted arm of Wordpress, Wordpress.com is WP’s answer to online hosted blogging, and allows you an account from which to run any number of blogs.  I’ve used it a bit a while back after I gave up using blogger (shortly before it was nucleated by Google), and it’s reasonably good.  It’s almost exactly like using Wordpress, but includes some community features, and altering the appearance of you blog beyond one of the templates provided costs money, actually cash money, really! It’s this that makes me no use Wordpress.com at all.

Tumblr

Tumblr is to blogging what Twitter is to spouting sentences no one cares about.  Tumblr has a few massive plusses to me.  It’s hugely simple; it’s login screen is also it’s signup screen so if you want an account or already have one the process is the same, type in an email address, blog name and a password and go.  That’s it.  Also, you can completely customise it, writing your own HTML and CSS if you want to.

By far the best thing about tumblr is it’s simplicity, you just choose what you’re posting, and then post it.  You can choose types of post from link/text/photo/video/IM and each has a custom screen for inputting the details.  Videos can be from YouTube/Vimeo or uploaded and photos can also be linked in from elsewhere.  It’s literally for just spewing stuff you like.  You can follow other tumblrs, and if you include a question mark in your post, it’ll give you the option of having comments, so it’s all a bit simple.  You can also add custom slugs to your URL for searchability if you like that kind of thing.

The best

Of the hosted options, the best (assuming that you want a simple blog, for outletting your thoughts on to the unsuspecting web) is Tumblr, which makes everything simpler than remembering to breathe.  A close second, and ideal for if you want to use a bit more organisation in your blog, is Blogger.  A remarkable number of popular single topic blogs are on Blogger.

Related posts:

1. Which Blog – Self Hosted
2. Has Wordpress Killed Your Spider?