Posted: Oct 23, 07 5:59am
Sorry to be such a laggard here. Too many writing projects, too many distractions.
One of the considerations for deciding where to start a blog is the social aspect. If you want your blog to be part of a community, rather than a stand-alone, sites like Live Journal and Vox are ideal. They give you the opportunity to join groups and find friends. Live Journal is straight blogging, while Vox has a lot of additional features. Both sites are owned by the same company, but have a very different look and feel.
Sites like Blogger and wordpress.com lack community and are more suitable for serious topics or a professional look. Blogger also allows you to monetize your blog, which you can also do at Live Journal, but only by paying for an upgrade. Blogger is probably the most popular blog site on the web, not least because it's owned by Google and closely integrated with Adsense.
There are dozens of blog hosts, and exploring as many as possible is a good idea before investing yourself too deeply in building a blog. Take a look at the FAQ or help menu, and if the site has a forum, dip into that to see what people are saying about it. If there are longstanding complaints that the owners never respond to, that might be a site you want to stay away from.
Visit some of the blogs to see if you like the templates. How much customization is allowed? Are the blogs covered with ads, and do you find any of them objectionable? Take into account before you judge the quality of the ads, that the blog owner may have upgraded to be able to include their own ads. Obnoxious ads aren't always the responsibility of the site.
