Korean Job Discussion Forums

[dbee]

What are the best blog sites out there ?

Do you pay for blog space ?

What kind of features do you look for when choosing a blog provider ?

[zappadelta]

Many blog spots are free. I am using Typepad, which isn't free, but I really like it. You can choose from 3 different packages, mine is the middle priced package and it's about 90 dollars a year. It's very simple to use and has many great features. You can look at my site for an example - www.hanguklife.typepad.com

[splok]

Personally, I don't like to put anything online that I don't have control over, so I have my own hosting account and run my own software. That's probably more of a hassle that most people want to deal with though, since there are plenty of places that offer free blog services (myspace.com livejournal.com blogger.com as examples). There are a ton of choices if you want to install your own software though. Check this link for a bunch of comparisons: http://asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

[SuperHero]

[dbee]

Cool, I'd be interested to know exactly what are the features that you look for in a blog ? For instance, if you were to list the top five features ... what would they be ?

And to those who host their own blogs ... what do you do with it, that you can't do with a free/subscription service ?

Also, how important is the domain name feature to you ?

[splok]

I'm not very familiar with the specific blog packages since I've never used any of them. I've been using postnuke with a phpbb plugin. Most blog software that I've looked at doesn't have forum support, and most of my sites have been essentially a news page with a forum. I really should change to something else, but I've been using similar setups for years and everytime I think about changing formats, the lazy takes over.

As far as doing your own hosting, there are good and bad things. You have lots of space and bandwith so you always have places to store images or videos and don't really have to worry about using too much bandwidth. You can install your own software to do whatever you want to do, and you have complete control over all of your data. Assuming you do regular backups, you can even recover if your host just shuts down one day. With free services, you're at their mercy really. I mean, i know the big players aren't going to shut down any time soon, but I do know that myspace and livejournal are frequently buggy and very, very slow (not to mention that space to upload images and whatnot is almost nonexistent with them, although I think you can upgrade that for a small fee).

Of course, there are downsides as well. The main thing that makes it more practical for most people to use the free services is that having your own hosting or server requires you to be comfortable installing and maintaining your own software on remote servers. You have to make sure whatever software you are using is kept up to date, which can be annoying. Some software packages are much more prone to attack than others, but if you don't keep the security patches up to date (or even if you get attacked before the security patches are released) you can comprimise not only your own hosting account but the entire server your account is located on. One person getting hacked can bring down every website hosted on that server, so security is something you should be very mindful of.

As far as domain names, you can register a domain name and point it at whatever site you want, even if you use a free site. For instance, you could register dbee.com and redirect it to your myspace page. That way you could give people a simple address but still maintain the ease of a free site.