Building a blog

So, I oftened wondered "Hey, there are all these blog websites, how do they not float away?"

That was before I got my own domain, created a blog, and learned that the internet is not actually made out of tubes (despite what some politicians may feel)

So I investigated



You need web hosting of some kind
You need an address
You can get away with not using a top level domain, just using a sub domain, but it won't take you far.

After you have those 2 things, you're ready to go. Do you want a blog? Random website? What do you need?

If you really aren't sure, think about it for a while. If you want to make a site from scratch, I recommend thenewboston.org as a good place to start.

If you want to make a blog, you're in luck, because I'm going to go over that weird do-hickey of a thang. (I swear, I'm not southern, unless you're Canadian)

I recommend namecheap for a domain registar. They're cheap, they're good, and have good customer service.

So things to know. First, pick a platform.

Tumblr is really good for reblogging but not so much for a single blog, terrible for comments unless you use disqus, which kinda kills the reblogging potential, and is really bad at search engine optimization. It also lacks metrics. One of the biggest issues with tumblr and blogs, is that you
Tumblr lacks solid google+ support, but you can bring that back with plugins.
What I dislike about tumblr is the severe truncation in the news feed.

Wordpress.com is very feature filled but costs a lot.

Wordpress.org is free but requires hosting. This blog was on wordpress for a while, but I switched to blogger. It's a bit overwhelming at first. It has many plugins. I don't think it's worth it.

Performance considerations that you don't have on the other platforms come into play, but that can be taken care of quickly with a good host (see In Motion Hosting) and either supercache or w3 total cache. The number of themes and plugins is frightening.

Blogger is interesting. The blog interface is a bit too orange for me, but it's generally nice. I actually have this blog reblogged as a tumblr, from blogger, so following my tumblr would actually let you see all my blogs as they come out, oddly.
I like the statistics. It gives me more motivation to blog, because despite a lack of comments, I know people are seeing my posts.

The gadgets are nice, but they're a little awkward. You may notice my gadgets don't fit together very neatly, but it kinda fits the chaos of the rest of the blarg, err blog.

Delayed posting is nicer on tumblr, but it's manageable on blogger.

What I dislike about blogger is the lack of a proper news feed. I get almost all my views from google+ and facebook.

I personally prefer the blogger platform over the tumblr platform for longform blogs, but if you're a microblogger, or you love pictures, tumblr probably is better for you. Wordpress is good for people who want to put a lot of time and effort into making a professional looking website, but it's frustrating as hell to use.

There really is no best option. Pick the best one for the type of writer you are