Best place to set up a blog please

[belgo]

just looking for advice on where to set up a private blog, mainly for photos.

Any ideas?

The two main ones people use seem to be Blogger and WordPress.com (not WordPress.org, although some folk do use that - it is more involved, you have to self-host).

I use WordPress and I'm very pleased with it. There are probably advantages to Blogger I don't know about though - I have never used Blogger.

I like the range of themes (designs) that WP makes available free; there are some great ones for photo blogs.

Sorry, meant to say "the two main ones people use here"

Bloggers is, apparently, slightly easier to use but Wordpress is more customizable.

I use Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.

thank you! I have discovered wordpress.com, recommended by a friend.

Tumblr is great for photos, Blogger is really simple to use for newbies, Wordpress is better for SEO and if you eventually want to go self-hosted. Each have their pros and cons.

I personally use Blogger and I'm loathe to change but if I was starting up afresh I'd probably choose Wordpress with the knowledge I have now as it's "cleaner" to use.

Wordpress (and other platforms as well) have themes that are specifically set up for photography:

wordpress.org/extend/themes/search.php?q=photography

oops, this link is better:

wordpress.org/extend/themes/tags/photoblogging

Thank you!

Blogger keeps breaking. Use wordpress.com!

wordpress.org, buy your own domain name, and hosting for just a few quid. You can install wordpress on your domain with just a couple of clicks these days (youtube has tons of videos showing how to do it.)
If you use blogger or wordpress.com you don't own your content and could lose it (speaking from experience here) - not much fun a few hundred posts down the road :(

I know :(

I had a today.com blog a couple of years ago that literally just disappeared when they sold the company or went bust or whatever. gutted.

I have a wordpress.com blog but your post has made me worried - will look at self hosting

I changed from blogger to wordpress (now self-hosting) a couple of months ago as I was fed up with blogger being down for days at a time, so that I could self-host and because I liked the cleaner look of WP.

Blogger is good for beginners bit WP is IMO better and more reliable for serious blogging.

Typecast
It was very easy to import blogger blog into WP. I lost a few followers at first but have built up again.

Old blog is www.ladouceviesuisse.blogspot.com

New

Www.ladouceviesuisse.com

If you want to compare the two directly.

Don't you all back up your blog posts anyway?

What's the best way to do that?

Well, you can export them to a file that you keep on your own hard drive, or you can write them all in word, save them and then copy and paste across to your blog.

The internet isn't infallible so if there's anything important I put online, I would always have a back up copy.

Thanks FB. I write most of my posts on the iPad native notes app, maybe I could just get into the habit of emailing them to myself... But then of course email accounts aren't infallible either. Nor is anything electronic, if you carry on. I'll be writing out all my posts with pen and paper next! (I do love a gorgeous notebook though...)

Then you'll lose your notebook :D

I tried writing in word and importing but sometimes the formatting gets muddled and it takes longer to sort it than it would to write anew.

Are you using WP, MmeLindor? You need to click on the 'html' tab instead of 'visual', then it strips the formatting for you.

Or you can click 'paste as plain text' in 'visual' (the one that looks like a folder with a 'T' on it).

Or you can paste it, select it all, and then click the little eraser, which strips the formatting for you.

Then it's just a case of putting the paras where you want them.

FB
Oh, thanks. Will have a tinker with that next week.

if you use the 'html' tab, just remember to click back to visual when you come to formatting it.