Craft Blogs???

[rockinhippy]

I've seen a lot of links for some pretty impressive craft blogs on here, with tutorials etc, some of which are the work of people on here.

You have inspired me to do one myself, but realise I don't really have much of a clue on how they work - so I'm asking you :)

What are the best, easiest to set up & use sites, I would especially like one I could customise with my own backgrounds etc & are there any where you can you mix Crafts, Crafts with Kids & maybe food/recipes, as creative cooking, baking & sugar craft are another pattern of mine - Do sites exist where you can do this, but in but in separate sections - IYSWIM

I don't have much to put up yet, but have started taking photos on my last project with DD as I went along - this was a leaving gift for her teacher, where we turned a painting she had made & signed into a small hanging moth repellant cushion & I realise with gifts for teachers being the norm & can be pricey, stuff like this might be useful to others parents too

So all advice gratefully accepted please :)

HI,
There are a quite a few blog sites such as blogger,wordpress and typepad. I think these seem to be the most popular ones. Im not sure about the sections you mentioned but there will be a way to do it if you mess around with html codes I would imagine. Iused to know how to do this but I've forgotten now.

Good luck with your blog.

I only have a basic blog on Blogger. I have used Wordpress ages ago when one of the Design Teams I was on used it, but they changed over to Blogger too. I do believe Wordpress has made several changes since then though.

Good luck! Make sure you let us see when it's up & running!

Thank you all :) - I've had a go at setting up "blogger" today - I didn't get very far as was trying to change the background, but not managed it as yet, but I'm sure I will, so far just managed the intro bit on the profile & the title , but will have another go later & keep at it & will post for you too have a nosey when I've anything to look at

Thanks again :)

I'm on wordpress and I find it v easy for a dimwit amateur like me. I've got different pages for different topics and blog on my phone mostly because the wordpress app is ace. have a look. I haven't spent anything on design (I know, you can tell) because mine is purely for fun but some of the premium themes are cool. I've been v happy so far. Advert for wp now over.

I just started about a week ago, again inspired by people on here. I've used wordpress and once you get going it's dead easy, plus there are loads of online tips and tutorials. You can play around with it before publishing it.

I use wordpress and as others have said, it's dead easy. You can have different pages for different topics if you like, that's really easy to do. I like wordpress.

I would recommend, if you are using photos, to have them on something like picassa, rather than just linking them from your computer to your blog, they don't seem as clear that way. I use picassa and then just link to the URL for the photo and it is a lot clearer.

I have used Blogger for me and Wordpress for a blog I have set up for DH's business and I find Blogger easier to use. Wordpress isn't hard though, just more business like, iyswim. Professional webdesigners advised us to use Wordpress for DH's blog - it is a better tool but for my own crafty blog I found Blogger to be perfectly adequate and I can make it as pretty as I want.

There is a good book on blogging for crafty people - Blogging for Bliss which has some good ideas and worth it if you have a little (or big!) craft business too.

It is interesting nobody has used Typepad though. I wonder why that is?

Wordpress is very good if you ever want to turn your blog into a proper website, as most web designers can use the wordpress code. It's also very easy if you want to register your own domain name in the future to shift your wordpress blog over. For example at the moment my knitting blog is twistedbraid.wordpress.com which is the usual way blogs are addressed, but in the future I could buy 'twistedbraid' and make it www.twistedbraid.com.

Agree re domain name. I've done this and love having my own 'place'

and have, in fact, just name changed too!

Thanks again - I've not done any more with the blog, not been well enough or had time of late, I did try & upload a recipe card, but it blurred the typing a bit so not as clear to read as i would have liked it to be & has put me off blogger a bit - looking at the wordpress ones linked here I think I need to try that one out too, as it does look very clean & sharp - need to find a few more braincells before I try & tackle it though, but will post a link when I do -

I did look at Pinterest a while ago - it does look very good, but so far not heard anything back as far as joining it goes :(

Your links all look great, very impressive & makes me want to get my finger out & have another go, so I might try later today

Thanks again everyone :)

Have a go, it's not like it's life and death, I've been splashing about in the shallows for a while now and am quite happy there. Dip your toe in!!