Blogging Question

[Armoury99]

Howdie folks,

Quick question if I may...

Since my fellow playgrounders are so intelligent, informative, helpfull, and err.... here, I was wandering if I could pick at your collective brain ( I promise not to use more than three tentacles, okay?) Do any of you have blogs, and if so what site would you recommend for someone interested in starting one? I'm not adverse to paying for the privilage, but I would want it to be in the kind of place where it will actually get seen, and where I can post different articles and maybe some art?


(thanks in advance)

:smallsmile:

[Hoplite]

I have no idea, but theoretically you could make a blog thread here, couldn't you?

[Bitzeralisis]

If I had a blog, it'd be filled with lies. >.>

[Armoury99]

I suppose I could, but I think I'd like my own space if possible. I'm not adverse to paying, but I would want to see it out there...


If I had a blog, it'd be filled with lies. >.>

Er... thanks? :smallsmile:

[Eldpollard]

I use livejournal. Not a bad blogging site. Mine's at http://eldpollard.livejournal.com There is a paying option, but there are free ones as well. I went for the one without advertising on my page. Free, but not many extras. I was never going to use the extras anyway though.

[Agamid]

A lot of my friends have live journal accounts and seem pretty happy with them.. though i have to admit that i've never even visited Lj.
Back when i was about 14 i used to have a Dj (Dead journal) but that place was just crawling with baby-bats and teeny-goths (like myself at the time).

Now i'm on deviantArt, which i'm really enjoying, get a lot of exposure. But I don't know if something like dA would suit you as, like the name suggests, the site's main focus is art just with blogging attached.

[Felixaar]

If I had a blog, it'd be filled with lies. >.>

If I had a lie, it'd be made of blogs.

You could try MySpace, maybe? Though getting it "out there" is kinda difficult no matter where you go. As Agamid said, DeviantArt is a great idea if you plan on doing a lot of art.

[Farmer42]

Blogger.com is another good site. User friendly, and you can even make it all pretty like.

[Timarvay]

Yeah, blogspot is what I use.

An example, that you may want to check out and show to all your friends:http://www.tremorvillestories.blogspot.com/

[SoD]

Myspace is my prefured option, although it only really works if you have friends who also use it...being the first would be tricky, methinks.

[dish]

It really depends what you're looking for.

LJ (I use that) and Myspace (I think, I don't have much experience) both have a tendency to be more about the social networking than the blogging.

On LJ you can easily find groups and communities who share your interests. If you join in discussions, and comment on peoples' journals, then they will come to visit yours. With a bit of work you can end up with a decent friends list, and plenty of people visiting your journal. However, you are very unlikely to ever attract any readers from the rest of the internet.

I think Myspace is the same - you can make lots of friends who use Myspace, but you won't be read by anyone else.

If you want to make a few friends and share your interests with others, then either of these would be a good option. Find out which site your real life friends prefer, and then make an account. (Warning: LJ have just announced that they will give out no more basic accounts after 12th March. From that date if you want a free account you're going to have to put up with ads on your site.)

If you want to put more emphasis on the 'blog' than on the social networking side, then go for one of the other platforms such as blogger, wordpress, blogspot, etc.

[valadil]

Blogger, blogspot, and wordpress all seem like reasonable options. LJ is more of a journal than a blog. Technically speaking there's no difference between the two but if people see that your URL is armoury.livejournal.com instead of armoury.blogspot.com they'll come to assumptions about what you're posting before they ever see your content.

Anyway, I keep an LJ for keeping up with friends. I mostly just read there and don't post more than once a month. I've started a couple other blogs too. One is for complaining about work. The other is for writing about code I've written. I haven't really mentioned either of them to anybody so they don't get hits. The former hasn't been updated in months as work hasn't been all that bad lately. The latter is only a couple weeks old so I've had lots of updates for it, but I'm not sure how long I'll bother with it. Both of those are hosted on a wordpress blog, but on my own server.

Getting your blog seen takes a lot of work. Successful blogs usually have a 1-2 year period of building up readers. During that time you need to comment on other peoples' blogs (preferably ones that are related to yours) and link back to your own. Most blogs that take comments include your homepage in the comment. So don't just spend time writing your own articles - put your thoughts in comments on other blogs for free advertising. Eventually blogs find their way onto social news sites like digg and reddit (though there's often backlash against blog authors who digg their own content). Speaking from experience if I find myself clicking on articles from a blog more than once every couple weeks, I subscribe to that blog. Basically what I'm getting at is that building up a large reader community takes just as much, if not more effort than actually writing the thing.

[Armoury99]

Thanks for all the replies so far. You've been a great help.

I'll let you know how this turns out.

[Renegade Paladin]

I use Blogspot (http://paladinsdomain.blogspot.com/), personally. (Warning: Political content.) It's never steered me wrong, and there are several highly read blogs hosted there. (Mine is not one, but I mainly blame that on my updating less frequently than Rich during his hiatus last year, if you catch my drift. :smallwink: )