I've been thinking of starting a website (basically a blog) so you guys don't have to listen to my crap and I'm wondering how well Blogger works.
It works fine. It is by far the easiest of the many services to set up. It is also the blandest of the services. If you have the time you can use your own custom template. There are some things that the free Blogger doesn't do:
- Archive very well. I'd like to have a better system in place. File my posts by catagory, have a calendar on the front page. Stuff like that.
- Comments. Personally I don't think I would add comments. I've seen far too many blogs with comments available and no one ever comments at all! This looks pretty lame. Even well read blogs have few if any comments. Moderating those comments is not something I want to waste time doing. Still just having the ability to add them is cool. If you do want them there are plenty of 'plug-ins' you can use to get around this.
- XML or RSS feed. I found a free service to do RSS, if you run MT this is pretty easy to implement.
- Images. They just upgraded the free Blogger to allow the uploading of images. I do it myself via ftp so I don't know how well their system works.
Do you like it? Do you use Blog*Spot or another hosting place?
Blogger went through a rough patch about 3 months ago when Google bought them out. They changed their ftp method from active to passive and a lot of people had to scramble (myself included) to find a compatible ftp server that could handle passive ftp. Since then it has been smooth sailing with several features that used to be pay only being switched to the free service.
I host the blog myself using a $30 web server.
http://www.code-crafters.com/abilityserver/index.htmlI would rate my html skills at about a 3 or 4 out of 10. The hardest part was creating a master CSS template and settling on one base page to work off of.
If I had the time, I would love to move my blog to MT.
http://www.movabletype.orgUnfortunately that $30 web server doesn't handle custom cgi scripts so no go right now.
MT is the weblog for the cool kids.
You seem pretty savy tech wise. I'm sure you could set one up. Just be sure to read the requirements prior to signing up for hosting.
I hope that answered your questions. If you need any other info just ask.
-TPFKAS2S
http://www.braglio.orgThis comment was edited on Jan 9, 22:31.
-TPFKAS2S