The Vine: September 3, 2014
I’m looking for advice on how to start a blog.
Mostly I’m concerned with hosting options (wordpress v. blogger v. livejournal v. the 1000s of other hosting sites).
I don’t really have too many parameters:
- I’d like to allow for comments.
- I’d like to be able to have sections (like TN has The Vine and Baseball, etc.).
- I’d like to allow for photos, but it won’t be graphic intensive.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
F
Dear F,
Based on your criteria, I’d suggest WordPress. I don’t know Blogger well, but in my experience with it, it’s janky and they tend to look dated. I didn’t know LJ still existed and I really don’t know much about that one either (obviously), but using LiveJournal has certain connotations that are perhaps better avoided if you’re above legal drinking age.
Tumblr’s a good start-right-now option, but not every Tumblr theme allows comments, and adding them via the Disqus system is sometimes problematic, because Disqus itself is sometimes problematic. It’s also harder to create categories in some themes. It’s great for photo-intensive blogs or private check-in-type blogs — if, say, you’re going on a long vacay and you want your fam to have a central place to see where you are and what you’ve been up to — but it’s not always as flexible as I’d like.
So, I’d go with WP. Comments and categories both come standard, and you can select a theme that emphasizes photos or that just sort of deals with them. Again, without knowing what you’re looking to do, it’s harder for me to recommend specifics, but the free version of WP is good to noodle around in, and if you want to expand, you go to a hosting site and get yourself set up (or pay to have it done for you; I couldn’t be shagged to deal with the FTPing and theme editing when I built Dirk’s site, so I had some bro named Clif do it for me for $39 through Bluehost).
I am actually not as knowledgeable as I probably should be about such things — I’ve gotten spoiled by one David T. Cole building me pretty blogs and helping me squash bugs — but I’ve worked with WP long enough to know some answers/hacks, and if you want to check back in and tell us more about your prospective blog, the readers and I can hivemind for you.
But this I know for sure: no red type on a black background. Thanks. (hee.) (But: seriously, do not.)
Tags: rando
I have 2 WordPress sites (dldancers.com and lauraethomason.com) and a Blogger site (francophilia.blogspot.com). WordPress seems to me to offer more options for both the look of the site and what you can do with it. I started out with dldancers.com just wanting a simple little website but over the years I’ve kept adding features to it (embedded Google calendar, tweet button, contact form, etc.) and doing that with WordPress is pretty easy. I can’t be shagged (love it) with doing any back-end work whatsoever so I just root around in WordPress till I find something I like and use it as is.
Blogger is also easy to use and I think I chose it because memorizing one more username and password was going to cook my brain, Blogger is a Google property, and I already had a Gmail account. I don’t think you can do as much with Blogger as with WordPress, but it will do the 3 things that F. specified.
As far as I know, no one is on LiveJournal anymore except Russian spambots. [Cue TN reader: “Who you calling a Russian spambot, lady?”]
The main trick is, after selection of which/where, is how to keep going.
I, like every third person out there, have a blog. But the fact is, like a diary, a blog “for my thoughts and stuff” is going to peter out fast. It just is. It’s too easy to either put off, like me, or endlessly rearrange the deck chairs (…HUSBAND) and not really go anywhere.
It’s also much much harder then you’d think to attract readers and commenters. Estimate that for every fifty or so people that come across/read your blog, maybe one will leave a comment. It may not bother you at first, but it does wear you down with the whole “shouting into the abyss” feeling.
So narrow your focus. Make your blog, at least at first, about ONE thing. Gardening, recipes, book reviews, whatever. Later, once you’ve gotten the hang of the discipline of writing every day or so, you can expand. Narrow focus, believe it or not, will also attract a bigger readership who are bouncing around out there on the Internet trampoline idly Googling gardening or recipes or whatever.
Heh. I browsed livejournal for years when it was the main go-to for a lot of online fandoms; these days, the primary topic of discussion over there is how fandom in general has migrated to tumblr and nobody has the attention span to READ anymore they just want to look at pictures and what’s the world coming to these days and also get off our lawns. (I tend to agree, to be honest; LW take note, if you’re planning for any real discussion to take place within the comments section of your blog, avoid tumblr like the plague.)
Livejournal also does not, that I recall, allow for sections as such, though if you wanted to do it that way, you could assign each category a tag and just point your link to that tag. I’ll also admit that I almost never see a livejournal considered on a level with ‘real websites’, and it’s rarely possible to make them as professional-looking. On the other hand, it’s a pretty hassle-free way to simply deliver, sort, and archive content.
There have been several flaps over the years between the users and originators of the site, and many users have moved over to a platform called Dreamwidth, which seems to have a very similar layout but supposedly a more active and approachable administration. So that might be an option for you if the basic format looks appealing but you’d rather not be tarred with the livejournal brush.
I’d agree with the WordPress rec. You can have them host your blog for free at WordPress.com. If I recall correctly, the free blogs are limited in what templates you can use, but if you’re not sure whether you’ll keep writing regularly, it lets you can dip your toes in the water with no money risk.
If you prefer more flexibility and want to host/manage the blog yourself, go to WordPress.org. They have links to hosting companies that specialize in working with WP blogs; I’ve had good experiences with both DreamHost and Laughing Squid, though I think DreamHost is more noob-friendly. WordPress.org also has decent help files to walk you through set-up and basic customization, and a lot of free templates and plugins that you can download.
If you want to spend a little more money to get precisely the look you envision, there are also tons of people who create and sell WP themes. One that I’ve liked is ElegantThemes.com, which is relatively affordable for personal blogs. They have a good variety of clean, professional-looking templates. They also respond pretty quickly in their support forums if you have problems or need advice on tweaking a theme.
Good luck and have fun with it!
WordPress is fairly user-friendly, and there are certainly a ton of plugins and themes out there. I got my theme for not too much $ from http://www.elmastudio.de – they also have support for bugs (but not for customization).
I vote for WordPress.com. I blog regularly (in Swedish, or I’d pimp it) on WordPress and infrequently on Blogspot and I find WordPress much easier to use. The format makes it easier to read longer texts than on Blogspot and it’s also more diverse in layout – even the free themes are plentiful, with one, two or three columns, header or just title and so on. You can choose a theme with links on one side, or make a link page, it’s easy to add pages. Pictures are also easy to add and change their size and so on. You may allow anonymous comments (but you still see the ip-address, if there is a problem) or not – it depends very much on what you write about, I think. A provocative theme may generate trolls.
I had to move my blog when Opera closed its blogging platform, and have been very contented with WordPress. It’s also a question of what kind of blogger you want to be (seen as), I have the picture that WordPress bloggers have a little more “serious” content, but it might be just a coincidence. I’d definitely stay far away from Tumblr, the comment format is impossible. There’s lots of fun things on Tumblr, but it’s just me-me-me, no interaction. I like the Dreamwidth concept, but the blogs I read there are all fandom, whereas I on WordPress have found more diversity (which of course may be coincidence).
Community does matter. WordPress also have the “see what others write about…” if you use tags. I’ve got not a few new readers that way (keyword “cat” ;-) or “books”.). Use tags consequently and generously. I would consider the categories as well, if I had started a new blog, but no way I was going to go back through ten years of blogging to do that retroactively…
Other good advice on blogging generally: one that I actually learned from Sars many, many years ago: regularity! Nothing drops the readers as much as a blog that isn’t updated for months, gets one “oh, sorry” and then falls silent again. I chose one specific day a week that I always update, be it with any silliness. A Simon’s cat video will do in a pinch ;-) I usually update more often, but at least that one day. You can chose your own goal, you can even have WordPress remind you, if you like. I wouldn’t recommend less than once a week, though.
Jen S also had excellent points: choose a focus. Choose something you are passionate about. Then you can expand later. I started with the cats, but now I write about a lot of other things too. Because of this, it’s also better not to choose a name that’s to specific (as “Cat slave”, for example…). A special name is good, one that gets stuck in people’s mind better than “F:s Blog”: A Yellow Orange, Soylent Green (if you write about scifi maybe?), Purple Paradox… you get the picture. Do not pick something that may change, as “Mrs Wonderful Guy” or “Penthouse Living”.
And as Jen S said: don’t hold your breath for comments. People comment less nowadays, and the longer and more well thought-out the post is, the fewer comments you’ll get. It doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t get read, people are just too lazy to argument sometimes (I blame the “like”-button. And smart phones, it’s harder to comment on them.) To get readers you should link generously and, of course, comment in other people’s blogs.
And lastly: Why do you want to blog? I do it mostly to keep up my writing, the public form forces me through writer’s blocks. I do like the readers, but you must write for yourself primarily, otherwise you’re going to hate it. If it’s a travel blog, or an update for family and friends – that’s fine too – but still, it’s your voice in the wilderness of the vast Internets. What do you want to say?
I switched over to wordpress a number of years ago and never looked back (my name should link to my blog). I don’t have much of a readership to speak of – it’s mostly personal musings and photography.
The thing I like about WordPress is the number of free themes and plugins available.
I’ve cycled through a number of themes over the years, and have settled on a really stripped down theme that I’ve made a few personal modifications to (wider main body column to match my preferred photo sizing, adding lighboxing, etc).
I think WordPress gives you the most flexibility to be as much or as little as you want.
Another option, if you want an “out of the box” solution and are willing to pay – my brother uses squarespace for his more professional site (theschoolsproject.org) – it’s more of a drag-and-drop type of website solution, but you have to pay a monthly fee if you have more than a small number of pages (but I think a “blog” counts as only one page). He’s completely hopeless with technology, and found it to be a good solution.
I’m not saying letter writer should use Live Journal, but I think you’re doing it a disservice when you say it should be avoided if you’re above legal drinking age. Plenty of older people including me use it and find it very interactive and friendly.
I don’t have an opinion on it either way, but it has a MySpace-y reputation that the LW may not want to deal with depending on what she’s doing with the blog.
You might also want to check out ghost, which is
http://ghost.org/
which is trying to be an open source alternative.
Hey all, I’m the letter writer. Thanks for all the input. I think – based upon comments here and what I’ve read elsewhere that I’m going to take the free version of WordPress for a test-drive & see how I like it. I appreciate the input; I’ll try to remember to post the link.
Now I just need to think up a name.