There are a lot of different options, and different priorities. For some people blogging is a source of income, typically from ads and affiliates, while other people use them as diaries, to bring "transparency" to a company, or, in my case, to announce things that aren't newsworthy, and don't deserve a press release. A new photo, some useful source code, things like that.

Do you use your own domain name, or do you run under a subdomain? For wordpress users, do you host the blog yourself?

Have you changed the theme? Did you build it yourself? Pay someone? Discover a hidden resource on the web? What do you use your blog for, what do you get out of it, and how do your users react?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

There are a lot of different options, and different priorities. For some people blogging is a source of income, typically from ads and affiliates, while other people use them as diaries, to bring "transparency" to a company, or, in my case, to announce things that aren't newsworthy, and don't deserve a press release. A new photo, some useful source code, things like that.

I created my site with an overtone just for fun (and to earn a little income on the side). I like writing top 10 lists, gives my perspective on varying issues.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

Do you use your own domain name, or do you run under a subdomain? For wordpress users, do you host the blog yourself?

Yep, just domain in my sig link. I do use wordpress, and I have virtual hosting.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

Have you changed the theme? Did you build it yourself? Pay someone? Discover a hidden resource on the web? What do you use your blog for, what do you get out of it, and how do your users react?

Yes, many times, even before I used wordpress, it looked awful, then afterwards, I couldn’t find the right style, but I’m very content with what theme I have now. I offer people a fun way to look at different topic, plus lists are easier to read, just better for my visitors. Most feedback has been overwhelmingly positive for it, they like the idea.

WordPress rules. That's all there is to say.

Wordpress hands down. I once made a Blogger account (since forgotten) but it was no way as good as Wordpress.

Wordpress rocks!

I use WordPress, and have messed with Blogger. WordPress beats Blogger hands down, no question about it.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...it's not what the rest of the world seems to make it out to be. For people who don't bother to look under the hood, it's great...you upload the pages, change a config file, set up a MySQL database, 5 minutes, you're up and running at about half speed.

Mind you, a successful blog will hack the skin, will try to fix the obvious SEO issues with it (primarily architectural, such as duplicate content and recordset paging), deal with RSS scrapers, and about a hundred other issues.

In other words, WordPress is a very good start, but that's all that it is.

I like blogger, because they have a good free host.

I've tried Blogger. They make it pretty easy to make layouts, without having to write all of the PHP code. I also like how they can upload to sites that don't have PHP on them using PHPtoFTP. You also get your blog listed on in Blogger's archives, and you have a chance to get featured.

But overall, for people that know how to use it, I think that WordPress is by far the best to use. There are other ways to get your name known, and WordPress just offers so many more options.

WordPress, but in all fairness I've never used blogger.

Adam you're the only person I ever see complaining about WordPress. I agree that just because you use it you won't have a successful site, but I think you're too harsh on it.

For example I think you'd agree that you could have a perfectly coded site and still fail if your content is garbage. I wouldn't expect my blogging platform to write my content for me though.

I understand what you're saying in that just because you install WordPress or any other CMS you really do need to do some customization. One of the things I like about WordPress though is there's a good chance the customization you want has already been do for you in the form of a plugin.

It's definitely a good idea to understand what's going on under the hood of WordPress, but I think you can have a very successful blog even if you don't.

So I'm the only person who's right. Wouldn't be the first time that has happened.

I still stand by what I said...WordPress is by no means the perfect universal be-all-and-end-all solution some people make it out to be. I even know of people who build entire websites using WP (and I'm not talking about websites that are just blogs, either).

And how many times have you seen someone throw up a site with the default WP skin, dump some RSS feeds from other sites into it, and claim they worked hard? (Yeah, for about 10 minutes, of which 9 was waiting for FTP uploads and configuation settings to take effect.)

Again, WP is a start. It's not an end. People need to start realizing that, and most people won't.

Hi

I use blogger myself, i never tryed wordpress and am happy with blogger, as its nice and simple which i like lol.

Woc

I use Blogger and I'm pretty much content with it.

I did edit my theme- and it only took about 5 minutes to add my third column. I didn't need to know/learn any language to do it, it just took about 5 minutes after I read how to do it.

My blogs are just hobby blogs where I pass on info that I've learned or share photos that I took or news items that relate to my niche. The coolest thing about it is that I have monetized them and I get paid a decent amount to upload pics and make posts that Blogger hosts. It doesn't cost me money to make money with Blogger-I see it as I'm getting paid for something I'd be doing for free anyway. And blogger is just monetizing friendly for publishers, they now even offer the ability to have inline ads.

I own a few domains that I'd like to put to use and I've been thinking about using WP but most of the free themes are just down right hideous and take longer to load than most myspace profiles. I'm hoping that Google gets into the web hosting business because Blogger (with a couple of tweaks) is just perfect for what I want to do with some of my domains.

What I get out of blogging is a sense of doing something that benefits other people. In my niche there are a lot of forums where people can discuss various aspects of our niche-but a lot of them seem populated by elitists. Sometimes you'll be told to go read a book on the subject or to Google in response to simple questions. The way I see it is that I'm taking information that a lot of people want but that only a few people on the net want to share and making it available to everyone with internet access. When someone who isn't a regular commentator on my blog posts to thank me for uploading a pic or explaining something they wanted to know-it gives me the motivation to keep blogging.

Adam I do agree with you that you should do more than just install WP and leave it alone. I still think it's a better solution than any other blogging platform.

Your critique of WordPress could be applied to any website or CMS. They're all just starts as opposed to ends. It's really not a WP issue, but rather a more general issue with people thinking anything will give them results without any work.

Anyone else here use freeblognetwork?

Google seems to like it but the blogs are a bit limited in scope unless you are a coder.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Adam I do agree with you that you should do more than just install WP and leave it alone. I still think it's a better solution than any other blogging platform.

Your critique of WordPress could be applied to any website or CMS. They're all just starts as opposed to ends. It's really not a WP issue, but rather a more general issue with people thinking anything will give them results without any work.

Agreed 100%, and that's why, as a general rule of thumb, I dislike them: I spend more time fixing what's wrong with them than I do building my own stuff.

I really hate the way wordpress rewrites my code, but otherwise it's not bad.

The read more function works fairly well against dupe content and scrapers to a lesser degree.

I wrote a primitive blog system with asp and sql server. It took about an hour to set up the tables, write a few procs, set up a form to enter things into and a page to display things. Trackbacks would have been more difficult, and this was far less of a start than wp, just because it has so many extras. But the damned rewrites - a div becomes a paragraph, even if you use it to host a Google map - are something that should be easier to turn off.

Forrest how does WordPress rewrite your code? How are you posting? I ask because I don't have problems with that myself.

All I've seen WP do is wrap <p> tags around a paragraph when you don't specify the tag and maybe add extra <br />s

I have the same problems with WP altering code.

Post a right-aligned div class or a Youtube vid, then go back to edit it, and you'll see what happens. Forrest is right.

It's never happened to me and I have right-aligned, left-aligned, and center-aligned divs, images videos.

How are you setting them?

I use wordpress for www.openroadbiker.com and I took a template and changed some of the colors. I am not very versed in css so I just dabble a bit to get what I am looking for and then stop. I just got that one set up the way that I wanted it. Before I was using joomla and I was very unhappy. You can check it out over at www.openroadbiker.com/joomla

As far as hosting I pay for shared hosting over at godaddy.

Originally Posted by vangogh

It's never happened to me and I have right-aligned, left-aligned, and center-aligned divs, images videos.

How are you setting them?

In html mode. It's not that often I try to use divs, but I'm irritated every time. I've put a YouTube video into a draft post, and it was destroyed. Without ever going into "visual" mode.

Google Maps are nightmarish to work with. You can't do a lot with them in Wordpress that you could do on a regular html page. Give it a try. Grab the sample code, add a marker, and try putting a link or any styling inside the bubble. Unless you hit paste immediately, it kills your line breaks, and as soon as you use a < or > character, it breaks out of the cdata and thinks you're typing html.

For software code, too ... if you wrap the whole thing in a code block, at the first empty line it'll close the code tag, then start turning what's left into paragraphs. Have a look at this.