Basic blogging opinions, please :)

[purplebear]

Doing a blog was on my to do list for this year (been puttin it off and off cos of bein a scaredy cat......but said I was gonna, so I better get started since it is now June.) I'm gonna try taking an informal poll before I get started.

Will first say......you are definitely lookin at a very techie challenged person. Guaranteed am gonna be embarassing myself quite a bit on this subject. (hence.....reason for bein a scaredy cat)

Noticed in my cpanel (umm another subject am definitely cpanel challenged, unfortunately) there is somethin about a blog...so am assuming I can set one up on my site for free?? maybe.

Tryin to figure out where to start so thinking best might be here. Decided I like bein a "bloggie instead of a blogger" but no disrespect meant to any who like bein referred to as a blogger.

To my fellow bloggies:

Which do you feel is best to use: Blogger or WordPress??

And.....is it better to have: Think correct terminology may be a dedicated site blog (one that is on your site..not quite sure how it is part of my site but not gonna get ahead of myself )

Or......is it better to have a blog that is separate from your site?

If possible it would be nice to have reasons given for your opinions but I realize everybody's busy, so just which you prefer would be very, very much appreciated since I'm tryin to take baby steps on this so as to not get too overwhelmed.

[greenflash]

Originally Posted by purplebear

Which do you feel is best to use: Blogger or WordPress??

I have both, so I love them both. Blogger lets you edit the html, which is very cool, but very technical (i.e. you have to know what to do)

Wordpress has awesome cover pages, but you can't really edit the "basics" of it (at least I can't)

I ususally switch-hit between the two, am using primarily the Blogger one now as a "landing page", then linking it to my wordpress blog for the details, seems to be working well

But i really wanted a hit map - and I couldn't add one to the wordpress site, but embedded it into blogger no problem

Wordpress also has built in hit counters and blog stats, which is very helpful

Doug

[Linda Buquet]

So sorry PB! Somehow I missed this question.

Everyone thinks their way is best, me included, so I'll tell you why.

I think it's best to have a WP blog set up your existing site. Then you are driving all your traffic to and focusing all your energy on one site that has 2 rooms, if you want to think of it that way.

On 5 Star I have 3 rooms. My main static site which is what you see when you hit my homepage, then later I added the blog on (as a subdomain) and later added the forum as a subdomain.

This way you don't have another hosting account, extra passwords to remember or anything. Just add it to your existing site. (assuming it's the same topic/niche.)

It's supposed to be very easy to set up WP and you can install right from Cpanel. HOWEVER to tweak a theme the way you want it and get all the right plugins installed AND working right and not conflicting with each other, is just more than technically-challenged-Linda would even consider handling. Plus I don't have time to mess around and waste and I know it would take me hours of goof ups to get it right. I just know me. It would take me 3 months!

I know someone that will set up a WP blog, with whatever theme you want and all the plugins you need for $50 - $100. So I would never set up a blog, much more cost effective for me to just have her do it. I have not used her yet, but she's a member here, so I trust that she'd do a good job. Let me know if you want me to hook you up with her.