Wordpress or Blogger

[amandajane]

Originally Posted by alex

If you're open to more options, have a look at http://opensourcecms.com. I wonder what kind of response you'd get if you added Drupal as a choice. I know at least one person here that loves it.

I've tried Drupal and found it heavy on server resources but I do understand that it's very popular. I've also tried phpfusion which is a favorite, it's a small download/upload and has many great functions and is easy to edit the style sheets to get the look you need. Phpwebsite is another good one, it's developed by a University and has a strong development and help forum, as does Joomla, an offshoot of Mambo.

They all have their pros and cons. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ is a good place to compare facilities.

[alex]

Originally Posted by amandajane

I've tried Drupal and found it heavy on server resources but I do understand that it's very popular.

Yeah, Drupal is a hungry pig.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by alex

I know at least one person here that loves it.

Drupal is awesome! But it's not for everyone.

It's good for developers if they need to develop complex websites. Drupal is a good place to start. For many folks, it's not a good fit.

For blogging, I really really like Wordpress. It's easy to get started and is fully functional out of the box. And there is a huge designer community around it, which makes for lots and lots of very nice looking free themes.

I have to echo the "get your own domain" advice. I can think of two big reasons for it.

1. Blogger hosts A LOT of spam blogs. When you comment on other blogs and leave your blog's url, spam filters may mistake your comment for spam because of the blogspot.com domain.

2. As your blog grows, you may decide you want to move to your own domain. At that point, all the links you've built up will be pointing to the old blogspot.com or wordpress.com site, and it'll feel like you're starting all over again.

Get your own domain name. It's $10 well spent.

[purplefdu]

WP is the way to be I started with WP and haven't found it to be too hard, but I can write code pretty well myself so that helps. I also host through blogging4life.com which is a good company owned by a friend and we're working pretty hard as a group to get listed and ranking. I've seen options to upload other blog types into WP, but have no way to test them. I've been looking into getting my own domain, but I think I'd rather leave my blog where it is than have to learn the backside of the backside of WP right now.

[CheapCanuck]

I use Blogger classic for the time being, because it gives you full functionality without cost. In order to take full advantage of Wordpress you need to have access to MySQL functions on your hosted website.