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Which homeschool blog is your favorite?

Blogger without a blog service

  • Is there a blog service that has all the features I need? I've tried Blogger, Livejournal, and Wordpress.com, but none of them seems like quite the ticket. See inside for the 3 features I'm looking for. I'm trying to start a blog. It seems like every service I try is about 90% of what I need, but missing some key feature. Here are the features I'm looking for: 1. The ability to have a private blog with well over 100 readers. I could see myself picking up a bunch of readers from my list of Facebook friends, and on top of that I'd like to feel comfortable mentioning the blog to people I meet in the future and casually inviting them to read it without worrying about exceeding the limit. (I'm not willing to have a public blog because I'm paranoid about a prospective employer googling my name one day and being offended by something I say about a controversial issue.) 2. A blogroll that allows well over 50 links. I have over 50 links to put in various categories of my blogroll (not just blogs but also individual articles, favorite Metafilter posts, etc.), and I want to be able to add more as I come across them. 3. Easily customizable templates, or at least a very tasteful default template. I care a lot about the appearance of the blog, and I'd like to have a distinctive combination of greys, blues, and a bit of purple. I don't have programming skills beyond some basic HTML, so I can't create a template from scratch. (I want something sleek and minimal but also with a bit of color and character. Most templates I've seen are either minimal to the point of looking like something from the '90s, or overloaded with color and graphics in a way that seems geared toward 16-year-olds.) Here's what I've gathered based on trying 3 different services: - Blogger has nicely customizable templates and plenty of blogroll capacity ... but is http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-howdoi/msg/2e49a86105dd0bae. - Livejournal lets you have 1000 private readers (or more with a paid account) and has so many templates that I can find a palatable one if I really try ... but http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=169&q=links+list. (I've tried http://del.icio.us/help/linkrolls and it doesn't seem to work on LJ) - Wordpress.com lets you have unlimited private readers for $30 (which I'd gladly pay for), and seems to have good blogroll capabilities ... but there are just a few boringly tasteful templates, they can't be customized at all (nor can you import one from a third party), and the main column is too wide anyway. I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount of money, but free would be ideal, needless to say. I've looked through AskMe tags, tried Googling for feature comparisons, and looked at help/FAQ pages from Blogger, Livejournal, and Wordpress. Of course, this turns up tons of information about different features offered by different services, but I'm not seeing a big-picture solution to my problem. (And I'm suspicious of the blog services' official help pages because they seem to try to conceal their limitations.) Am I missing some way to have everything I want, or is this just not available? If not, then what do you think would be the least-bad option? I realize that the answer might simply be that I'm right -- none of the services work for the above reasons. But I wanted to run this by the hive mind to see if there's either some workaround for the above problems or some other service that offers what I want. I'm honestly on the verge of giving up blogging because there doesn't seem to be a viable service out there.

  • Answer:

    Does http://www.typepad.com meet your needs? The way you restrict access to your blog is not by having your friends all have accounts somewhere and then adding them to your list of readers, but by password-locking the blog and sharing the password with your friends. They have a lot of options for customizing the look of your blog, and I think many their starter templates are quite pleasant. I don't think they have limits to the number of items you put in a blogroll/linklist, but perhaps someone else can step in to confirm or deny.

jejune at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I don't think they have limits to the number of items you put in a blogroll/linklist, but perhaps someone else can step in to confirm or deny. True. There is not a limit to the number of links that you can put into a blogroll. Full disclosure: I work for TypePad, but based on your criteria, it easily meets your requirements. jejune, feel free to MeFi Mail me if you have any questions.

mewithoutyou

If you're willing to pay, buy some webhosting and install wordpress yourself (it really isn't hard). Then you can install whatever wordpress theme you want. (The same goes for movable type)

chrisamiller

You may be interested in a http://www.ninjablogsetup.com/. He's got a pretty nice list of themes, and you may be able to submit your own.

theiconoclast31

Well, this problem has been resolved. I ended up going with Blogger, which is free and has everything I wanted. Wordpress, http://deputy-dog.com/2008/10/pfft.html, would not have been a good choice.

jejune

Just sign up for a hosting service that provides Wordpress as a one-click install (Dreamhost is one among many). It's easy to install custom templates and you won't be limited by any of the wordpress.com restrictions. Hosting plans, especially if you're willing to pay for a year in advance, are pretty cheap ($8-$10/month, perhaps less). You'll also be out about $8/year for domain name registration. Besides being able to pimp Wordpress to your heart's content, you will, depending upon the host and hosting plan, have lots of extra hard-drive space and your own domain with which you can do many useful things. Got a big file you need to share? SFTP it to your site. Want to back up a few mission critical files? SFTP them to your site. Got a crazy uncle who needs a site for his Ukulele shop? Set it up for him. The internets are a lot more enjoyable when you have the right tools.

wheat

You can't change the markup with WordPress.com, which does limit restyling, but you can use http://wordpress.com/products/custom-css/ to have a lot of control over presentation.

malevolent

OK, based on everyone's answers, it looks like the rational thing to do is: Step 1: Stick with the free, aesthetically pleasing Blogger until I hit the 100-reader limit. Step 2: Probably switch to Typepad at that point. I might as well put off paying for this until I need to. That said, please don't hesitate to offer more suggestions -- I'm still open to any options. Sorry, but I'm just not seeing how wordpress.org is viable. Too complicated, too techy, too many options, too expensive. (The cheapest Typepad account, $50, costs significantly less than wordpress.org.) Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

jejune

Many of the big web hosts (dreamhost, a small orange, etc) have "one click install" of wordpress. That's about it. You go to an admin page, click "install wordpress", give it some information, and a minute later you get an e-mail saying "your blog is ready." Then you do a little configuring on your blog. It's nothing to be afraid of. I know that Dreamhost also bundles dozens of themes into their default install--just click one and go. Installing a different theme is not that hard, but not a one-click operation either.

adamrice

Well, even if wordpress.org is so simple, which it certainly doesn't appear to be based on their own "getting started" page, I would need an explanation of why it's worth the extra amount of money beyond the $50 a year that Typepad costs. Unless there's some specific reason for spending that extra money, Typepad simply looks like the better website for less money, so I'm going with that.

jejune

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