Not to brag or anything, but now I’m on the front page at myzip. Apparently xangans rock.
In the course of plying the Dark Art, I have become familiar with a whole bunch of blogging platforms.
Don’t ask. I could tell you, but then… you know the rest.
Anyway, I thought I’d share my experience of these things with you, and ask for yours in return. I have included xanga, which I probably shouldn’t. Since xanga is a social network for me, I probably can’t compare it properly with sites I’ve used just for sitebuilding. However, I would still have to say that this is one of the easiest hosts to get started with. I’m not including things like linkedin, facebook, and myspace, because I have only used them for their networking functions, and not for sitebuilding at all. My failure to include them is therefore not intended to show that they don’t deserve awards. I’m also not including site hosts that aren’t bloghosts. Have I included enough caveats?
Herewith, the awards:
- Hardest to use: bravenet and zerocatch
- Coolest: weebly and spruz
- Most elegant pre-made themes: edublogs and squarespaces
- Worst pre-made themes: zerocatch and wikispaces
- Best wizards: tripod and edublogs
- Easiest to get started: terapad and xanga
- Most irritating to use: blogspot and livejournal
By the way, after widespread experience with these and several more platforms, I have to say that Macs don’t work well with them. Often, you have to do the whole thing in HTML, can’t see the edges, get your pictures in odd places and your knickers in a twist, and find that great wodges of your work disappear when you try to save it. So a special award for
- The least totally Mac-unfriendly: tripod
I can’t believe how long it has taken to prepare this not-so-interesting post. I hope you all come and comment about your favorite blog hosts and why you think xanga is cooler than spruz and how livejournal and blogspot are not either irritating, so that I will feel this has been worth it. For the record, I like xanga best as a community, and it is no surprise to me that we xangans are all over the myzip front page.
I am not the only one having victorious accomplishments, as my son used to put it when he was a preschooler. #2 son has been accepted for Governor’s School, which was a great thrill for me, though he is being pretty blase about it. #1 son got a promotion and a raise at the sandwich shop, and asked me to make him a headband for work really fast. He felt that I should have finished it last night, actually, but I did not. However, it is sitting here in my “in basket” (the basket is imaginary, so you can only see the in) and I might finish it today.
However, it is also cleaning and errands day, and I hope to get some work done in the garden as well.
Enough of this idle persiflage, then. Enjoy your weekend!
Sean got http://73107.net! Yay!
I’m pretty happy with . I’ve used Xanga, Livejournal, Blogger and b2evolution, and I like the WordPress interface fine. But I’m not a CSS monkey so I can’t say as to how easy it is to customise, etc. I’m using it pretty much right out of the box.
Let’s try that again. One thing I don’t like about Xanga is the way bad HTML kills it. Ahem.
I’m happy with . I’ve used Xanga, Blogger, Livejournal and b2evolution. I’m not a CSS monkey and I use WordPress right out of the box, so I can’t vouch for that part… but Iit does work well even if you don’t tweak it.
I think I dotted my ‘i’s and crossed my ‘t’s this time…
@feebeeglee – Yay indeed! That’s a great post he’s got there, too. Much more strategic than most of ours. So what do you like about WordPress? A lot of the bloghosts use that platform, and I’m okay with it, but it’s not a host, right? Can’t really tell where you’re hosted (I looked before I did this post, actually) since you bought a domain. I mean, I could go run your URL through some tools and find out, but I bet you’d tell me… Did you leave xanga because you prefer to use HTML? I would have guessed it was an SEO decision, but my mind works that way nowadays, and I never thought about it before.
Nope, they host too, for free. ‘yournamehere’.wordpress.com.
I’m using them because Sean is (this is all theoretical now) redoing our gleeson.us blog setup.
As far as hosts go, we use Dreamhost. They’re okay.
For a small amusement and to see some SEO gone awry, google
dreamhost phone number
and you’ll see why my phone rings at 3AM not infrequently…
I love the idea of only being able to see the In of an In Basket.
I’ve tried blogspot, myspace, and livejournal, but I still like Xanga the best. Except for their exclusive “TRUE” club. Some friends of mine have gone to wordpress, and it looks all pretty and special, but I’m done playing the field. I married Xanga.