April 05, 2004

• Considered musicblogging?
• I use Movable Type for my blog and it is quite simple to set up and customise, especially if you know how to work stylesheets (I'm still learning, which is why it looks so boring). Here are the requirements for hosting/running a Movable Type blog. Another option for starting out is blogger/blogspot, who provide the software and hosting and give you a free blogspot subdomain (ie. yourblog.blogspot.com). You can customise your blog, add commenting, and I think have an rss feed. You can start right away. I've tried blogger and didn't think too much of it, but it seems like it would be a good starting platform. You could also use metaphilter, which is what MoFi runs on. It's a little slow and buggy, but some of us monkeys have been working on improving the code and you can pick up the hacked version here. It's also highly customisable -- try some of the links off the Metaphilter page to see what others have done with it.
• I use Blogger for my thing and I really like it. Friends try to convert me to MT, but Blogger is very easy for me to use, somewhat customizable, and the support staff helps me out even though I've never given them any money.
• The really great thing about blogger is that you can be up and running in about 5 minutes. On top of that, it requires very little expertise, and it's free. But as tracicle alluded to, Blogger lacks many of the features that the hard-core blogging folks like. Still, it's a great place to start. For more information, here's a detailed article that compares and contrasts a lot of the blog software options out there. And even though you probably don't want to start off with it, I'll put a plug in for pMachine Pro, which I use on my site. The two big downsides to pMachine are that it can be tricky to install if you're new to these sorts of things, and it's not free (or even cheap for that matter. Something like $45 U.S. if I remember right). But it offers a ton of very impressive features. (which, come to think of it, I mostly don't use. hmmm.) But it really is a solid program if you have the time and money to figure it out. Also if you're looking for a place to host your Web pages, you might want to check out Lunarpages. It's inexpensive and reliable.
• I cheated. I used MT for awhile, but it was just too much work to do what I really wanted. Around the same time as deciding that I needed to 'upgrade', I also decided I didn't want my personal project on my work servers. So I moved to a competing host who offered script installs via Fantastico. I tried a couple of the products and settled on PostNuke. The result is here. Forgive the screwed up tag at the top if you're using Firefox, et al, I just found out about it and haven't been able to fix it. I'm pretty happy overall, just wish that I had a little more time to work with all the plugins available.
• Blog Wiki
• I use MT. I started from a more or less zero base of knowledge, and managed to get it up and running, but it took me a long time - I'd say more then ten hours overall. That said, I learned a lot of stuff and it was a very worthwhile, though at times very frustrating, experience. (I should add I don't update it much... Half the fun for me was persuading it to work.)
• I use MT as well, but I would recommend getting your start on blogspot until you get into the swing of things. Although, if you futz around in Dreamweaver and Frontpage you might not have too much trouble getting MT installed. [If you choose to use it] for hosting I recommend Logjamming and for domain name service I recommend Domainmonger.
• I use GoLive and do it all lovingly by hand. Of course, my blog doesn't have much at all in the bells & whistles department, but it's entirely my design, and does what I want it to do, mostly. And, since I'm only replacing the front page's text daily, and the image monthly, it's not much work at all. I never have gotten my own domain name. Maybe this thread will finally get me to do that...
• I always suggest people start with Blogger/Blogspot and upgrade as and if they find it necessary. I started that way and kept it up for over a year, though I was getting more and more annoyed by disappearing archives, Blogger going down for hours, &c. I finally made the move to MT and have never regretted it; what I do regret is the comments that got eaten by Blogger before the move and will never be seen again. But it's a good place to start: it's free and easy. (Oh, and I get my domain name via gandi; it's only about $13/yr, and I've never had any problem with them.)
• I'm using blogger, mainly because I have no way to host an MT install. (I used to have a 1&1 account, but it got closed down for bandwidth overuse. 5 gigs in a week!)
• I'd also reccomend Blogger for starting out; and not only because it's free, easy to use, and offers you the option of their own blogspot hosting or hosting it yourself (I use it for my blog; I'm hosted by hostroute, who are pretty cheap and I haven't had any problems yet - but I haven't yet had the major bandwidth usage or anything that might provoke problems, so that's not a full on reccomendation). The other advantage is that Blogger is so widely used that the majority of add-on tools work seamlessly with it (such as HaloScan comments, and the w.bloggar tool which my mate keeps raving about, but which I haven't used myself yet). If you're pretty html proficient, then you can customise the template of really Blogger easily, which is nice for conveying that you're not just another knobhead with a blog, but a serious player, yeah?
• This is quite a wealth of information. It looks like blogger will be my best bet but I'll still be doing research on the idea of MT in the future. Thanks to all!
• I hope this thread isn't over yet, because there are a few questions I would like to ask - riding on the back, as it were, of genial's original query. 1. Does anyone have any experience of TypePad, which is done by the same people who do Movable Type? 2. Like genial, I am thinking of setting up a MT blog at some point in the future. Would it be better to take the plunge now, to avoid the hassle of having to transfer an archive across to MT from some other platform? 3. I hear a lot of complaints about comment spam. Is this a serious problem, and is it likely to get better or worse in the foreseeable future? All advice gratefully received.
• Foxed, I've had some comment spam recently, and apart from going through and IP-banning every single spammer (and there were a lot), you can't do much to prevent it. My comment spam all appeared within the last couple of weeks and I can't see it stopping that easily.
• Actually, there is something you can do to prevent comment spam. Check out the tip here. Morte a la spam!
• I've had much less comment spam since I installed MT Blacklist; every time I get some, I just add the basic part of the URL to the list and they don't bother me no mo'. And it's such fun to look at my activity log and see the bastards trying to get in and being repelled!
• Cool, thanks for those tips.
• A late comment: Blogger's recent rebuild is sweet, and its freeness makes it a palatable choice for a first blog.