Best place for a web log?

[American Oyaji]

I'm thinking of joing the ranks of the bloggers and I want to know what's the best blog service that you guys know of? Also curious about free and pay services.

Any help will be appreciated.

AO

[gkanai]

I want to know what's the best blog service that you guys know of?

The free one that is popular is Blogger.com

The best one is typepad.com (prices depend on features)

[FG Lurker]

Well, if you blog after you come back here it looks like you'll have lots of company:

Bloggers top 3 mil in Japan
JT, May 18, 2005

The number of people operating blogs on the Internet totaled 3.35 million in Japan at the end of March and is seen more than doubling in the next two years, while blog-based markets are expected to expand by about 40 times in value by the end of March 2007, the government said Tuesday.

(Full Story)

Don't know who translated it, but they might want to learn how to use a period...

[American Oyaji]

Gen,
Is typepad the one you use?

[igor]

I tried blogger for about three months. Quite nice for a freebie. You can get free blog space or move it onto your own domain area. No search when I used it (except Google search which is a cheap and nasty solution in my opinion). Templates are a few clicks away and you're pretty much rolling (good for taste testers)

I also ran WordPress - GNU license so it's free - on me site for a while. More options (like search and cute little calendar for archives), but a bit on the niggly side. I've never had to use stylesheets to layout the entire page and still don't get it?! Need MySQL so that roughly transaltes to getting your own domain with MaySqueal DB included http://wordpress.org/.

Seen a couple of sites with TypePad. Seems okay. Another is Movable Type - pay for the ware and need your database stuff (haven't used so don't know).

In terms of getting your feet wet I'd say blogger. I was blogging within minutes of starting and stacks of templates. Of course, if you write a million posts and decide to move onto a new blogware, then the porting of data gets finicky.

Now my blog's been killed in favor PostNuke - content management (news, links, board and other stuff) - to make me feel important.

[Charles]

Seen a couple of sites with TypePad. Seems okay. Another is Movable Type - pay for the ware and need your database stuff (haven't used so don't know).

TypePad IS MovableType, it's just hosted by SixApart, the company that writes MovableType. It's easy to get into because it's all set up for you.

I highly endorse MT. I use it on my own server. You can use MT for free, you do not need to pay for the software for your own personal blog, as long as you obey some restrictions (no resale of hosting, no more than X number of blogs on one CPU, etc.)

[AssKissinger]

I think you should open up your own little blogger thread right here. We want tease you promise.

[Kuang_Grade]

[gkanai]

Gen,
Is typepad the one you use?

I use MovableType for my personal site, but I don't recommend it to beginners. The installation, quite frankly, is a b!tch, and updates, while not common, are the users' responsibility.

Start with blogger.com and if that's not enough, then typepad.

[American Oyaji]

Thanks guys!

I appreciate all the info!

I will mainly use it to rant/rave about different stuff and to write short stories.