Best Blog site?
 

What would be the best site to geta Blog on? And why?

I think the two most popular blog sites seem to be Xanga and LiveJournal because they offer a bunch of services for free.

I guess they do have their own pluses. If you're not too web savvy, Xanga's the way to go. It's easier to customize your journal there, and you can also add music. With LiveJournal, you can customize your page however you like, but it's more difficult. But--they do offer a bunch of different styles you can choose from to create your page. My page was done with css style codes (that I didn't do, obviously!). I guess Xanga's more user friendly.

I like LiveJournal better because you can make posts public, private (for your eyes only), and friends only. And within those you save as friends, you can also filter posts so that all but say one or two friends to see your posts. To my knowledge Xanga doesn't allow private or friends only postings.

The communities on Xanga are also easier to navigate than Xanga (they have blogrings). But Xanga also offers some storage space for pictures.

Both sites offer premium services for a fee...you get extra storage space and more user icons.

But as far as reliability goes, LJ goes down often (more than GC!). It's not for that long though, as they have people working around the clock to fix minor glitches here and there. To my knowledge, Xanga's only been offline once in the past few months.

I chose LJ mainly because I knew that a lot of my friends were already on it, so it was easier to make posts friends only.

Hope that helps!

I was on Diaryland and I switched to LiveJournal. I like LJ a LOT better. The comments feature is nice, where people can comment on each entry.
It's a bit difficult to figure out how to modify the layout, but they have communities and FAQ about that to help.
I really like the private entry feature on LJ. I use that to save things that I want to transfer between computers, like to save a paper that I've typed on my own computer and need to access at the library to print it. Make it private and no one knows it's there but you!

i started with blogger, but i wasn't impressed.

movable type....but you have to be a bit technically oriented to use it (unless you get someone else to install it).

it has nice features and not a closed off community like other systems.

Isn't movable type the program/language or whatever? I do agree with her though. She and everyone else with movable type has phat blogs.

-Rudey
--PHAT

movable type is the freeware that you have to install on your (own) server.

w0rd to phat blogs.

livejournal is probably the best in my opinion--the most features for the cheapest, and a HUGE community (including me! :))

i'm a faithful xanga blogger, and yes- it does have the "private" function.

i've wanted to get on over to LJ too, but i don't want to leave my xanga hanging because i've been over there for a year and if i got an LJ i'd probably end up keeping both and that wouldn't be good.

LJ bouth by Six Apart
 

LiveJournal has now been bought out by Six Apart (the company that owns & produces Moveable Type [an install on on your own server blog] and TypePad - expensive hosted so-called blog service).

Press release comments say the merger won't affect anything. Watch out for flying pigs.

Alas poor LiveJournal, we knew you well.

I don't think LJ is going to change much -- if anything, it will get better. I could be wrong, but I'm not going to worry about it unless and until something bad happens.

I personally love LJ but I haven't used any of the other journal sites. I signed up for a Greatest Journal a long time ago but didn't use it. Blogspot seems weird because I don't think they have user info pages and friends pages, but I could be wrong. I really like being able to read my friends page.

I have the equivalent of an essay question.

In layman's terms (don't get all technical on me, that is) what is the difference between an LJ and a blog? I thought it was just that "weblog" or "blog" was a generic term and LJ a brand name, but reading about this Six Apart deal gives me the impression that isn't the case.

/sounding like my mom referring to "Snoopy Dogg Dogg"

There really isn't a difference between an LJ and a blog. Some weblogs are topical and discuss current events, while others are more diary-like. But I've seen some LJs that are more "blog like". *shrug*

ETA: The biggest difference I can think of between the two is that the thing that makes LJ so great is the community that builds up around the system. You can find lots of people that share your interests very easily - that's a little difficult to do with self-hosted weblogs.

The technical difference might be the features you'd get with each service, but for someone who doesn't want to mess around with all the technical mumbo jumbo, an LJ would work just fine.

Oh, and I hope Six Apart makes the LJ network more stable, but to do that I fear that all of the free accounts will become a thing of the past. :(

I thought the same thing. I was under the impression that LJ is a place that hosts your blog (IE online journal) But hey what do I know.