Free Blog Services

Blogger is the most famous and most popular of all the free blogging services, and for good reason — it’s one of the most capable services that asks for very little in the way of personal information. You will need to create a Google account if you don’t already have one, and for that you’ll need to give your e-mail address, choose a password and display name, and fill out the word verification box (where you prove you’re a real person and not some automated service by typing in the characters you see inside a picture). You’ll also need to agree to Blogger’s terms of service. To start your own blog, pick a title and URL subdomain (if you choose mysampleblog your blog’s URL will be mysampleblog.blogspot.com) and choose from one of the twelve color and layout templates. It’s a simple process — you can go from blog creation to your first post within minutes. Blogger supports post labels (also called tags), reader comments and the ability to moderate them, full or partial-post Atom site feeds, comprehensive archiving, and the ability to automatically “ping” Weblogs.com as you post. Your blog can be public or private, and you can add co-authors or make people log in before they read your blog. You can change your blog’s template at any time, or you can make your own custom layout with Blogger’s “drag and drop” layout editor. All in all, Blogger has a very rich set of features with an easy-to-use interface. It’s an excellent choice for first-time and experienced bloggers alike. The main downside is that there are so many Blogger blogs, you may find it hard to find a blog subdomain that isn’t already in use.

Another popular blog service, WordPress, claims that you can use it to start a blog in seconds, and that isn’t much of an exaggeration. First you’re asked to choose a username, give your e-mail address, and agree to the WordPress terms of service. Then you pick a blog subdomain (as in mysampleblog.wordpress.com), blog title, language for your blog (English is the default), and whether it should be listed publicly. You will receive a confirmation message immediately by e-mail; click on the activation link in the message and WordPress will give you a password. Log in with your username and the password and your blog is ready for your first post. There is a personal profile you can fill out, but the information is optional. WordPress supports post tags and allows reader comments with different levels of moderation (for example, you can ask to approve comments with two or more links in them, or comments that contain specific filter words), and offers RSS and Atom site feeds. The free version of WordPress offers 58 predefined color/layout themes for your use. Publishing a post automatically pings Pingomatic, which in turn pings seventeen blog search and directory services, including Weblogs.com and Technorati. The WordPress people are adamant that you cannot use your WordPress blog for advertising or commercial promotion, although they may “occasionally” display “unobtrusive” text ads on your blog pages.

Vox, from SixApart, the creators of Moveable Type, is essentially the free version of TypePad, a very respected and full-featured paid blogging host. Vox’s registration requires a little more personal information than I like to give; they need your e-mail address, a password, and a member name, which is fine, but they also ask for your birthdate (month, day, and year — they say they need it for legal reasons). Vox’s word verification box is quote difficult to read (I actually got the characters wrong the first time), and they also require that you agree to their terms of service. Their confirmation e-mail message was immediate, but the Vox site itself operates rather slowly under a dial-up Internet connection — much more slowly than either Blogger or WordPress. Once you’ve created your account, you can type in as much biographical informaton as you want (everything except your birthdate is optional) and start posting to your blog immediately. Vox supports post tags, comments and comment moderation, and Atom site feeds. For your blog’s design, you have four layout choices and fourteen categories of themes — and some of the categories have as many as fifty-four theme choices. Vox integrates with the Flickr and Photobucket photo hosting and sharing services and also allows you to post from a cell phone. If you have many photographs you want to add to your Vox blog, SixApart offers a free Windows XP program that will upload them for you. To help support the service, Vox places Google ads on each page of your blog.

Blog.ca is a free blog service based in Canada that has sister sites based in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other countries throughout the world. You don’t need to be a resident of Canada to get a free blog at Blog.ca. To register, you need to choose a login name and a password and give your e-mail address; you also need to type the characters in a very difficult to read word verification box and agree to their terms of service. Their e-mail confirmation message was immediate. To start a blog, you need to provide your first name, last name, birthdate (month, day, and year again), gender, country, and city. For the design of your blog you can choose from nineteen base designs. Blog.ca supports post tags, moderated comments, blog co-authors, and RSS site feeds. You can post to your blog from the Blog.ca web site, your cell phone, your Internet-capable PDA, or by e-mail. Every time you post, Blog.ca will ping Technorati, Weblogs.com, Blo.gs, IceRocket, Newsgator, and Feedburner.

Xanga boasts a “quick one-step registration” that asks for your username, e-mail address, password, birthdate (month, day, and year), word validation code, and agreement to the Xanga terms of service. They have a very long personal profile questionnaire, including questions about your religion, heroes, work industry, and hobbies, but all the questions except birthdate are optional. Then you choose a name for your site (they generate your site’s URL subdomain themselves), choose a font, and pick your blog’s “quick template” from eight choices. Xanga’s blogs support tags, comments, and limited photo uploading. Xanga generates your blog’s page title from your name and the words “Xanga Site” (such as “Mark’s Xanga Site”), and they display ads on the blog pages. They also want you to enter the e-mail addresses of your friends so that they can be invited to join Xanga.

MySpace is more an online community than a blogging service, but they do offer free blogs to their members. To become a member you need to choose a password and fill out a word verification box, and they also require your e-mail address, first name, last name, country, postal code, birthdate (month, day, and year), gender, and language. (You can hide your birthday from public view if you want.) MySpace encourages you to upload a photo for your profile and urges you to invite your friends to join by typing their e-mail addresses into a form. The blog itself is very customizable with a built-in RSS feed. MySpace puts sponsored links (ads) on each blog page.

Windows Live Spaces: is another online community like MySpace. You can sign up using an existing Hotmail, Windows Messenger, or Passport account, or you can register a new account by choosing an ID and password and providing your e-mail address, answer to a security question, first name, last name, gender, birth year, country, state, and ZIP code. You will also have to fill out a word verification box and agree to their terms of service. Unfortunately, Windows Live Spaces is a very slow site, especially under a dial-up connection, and the sign-up page never loaded completely, which meant I could never complete the process, even though I tried reloading the page several times. Also, Windows Live Spaces doesn’t seem to work at all if you’re using Mozilla Firefox as your web browser.

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