There’s all sorts of reasons to blog. From keep a daily journal of your life or
expanding your social networking. What’s
most important is where you keep your blog.
Some of us want a smaller, more homey blog host. Up until recently, Open Diary fit that
description. It offered social
networking, various templates, and thousands of colors to enhance your
words. Its two big downfalls are that it’s
a hive site and that it’s unreliable.
What’s a hive site?
Your words are behind a wall that only fellow hive members can
read. What’s unreliable? Crashing and taking all your entries, constant
time outs, freezing, loading slowly, and other sad things that don’t get
repaired in a timely manner.
As Open Diary continues its slow slide downward with the
Diarymaster employed elsewhere, many members are moving their blogs to Prosebox. It too is a small, very simple blog platform
begun May of 2013. Another mom and pop
blog site. Mom and pop Xanga was one of
the earliest of blogging sites. It grew
in size, yet now, much like OD, they have begun fundraisers to keep the site
open while announcing a closing date. It’s
much as if your blog host is a Rambler…obsolete, while several other hosts are Volkswagens
and Caddies…innovative yet stable.
I like blogging. When
I had my stroke in 1989, my short term memory fled with the wind. Keeping a blog saves my memories. I don’t write every day, though it is
suggested for those of us who are fuzzy in the head do this, but I record
enough of my day to day life so the details are there. Perhaps my blog is me.
The several web sites that offer reviews suggest Blogger and
Wordpress as the best of the free sites.
Please review your choices of a
blog host carefully. If you want
stability and longevity, choose one of the larger sites. You won’t lose your social networking if you
share your URL. If you don’t mind being
a part of unreviewed birthing pains, choose a smaller host. Perhaps if I had these reviews to hand, I
would have begun on Wordpress instead of OD or even blogger.
Click on or copy and paste these addresses into your address bar to read
the reviews:
Blog Services Review:
Best free Blogging sites from PC Magaziine http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388910,00.asp
Forty Free Blog Hosts
Life is Really in the Footnotes:
I pay WP $$ for various features. Don't know if it makes a difference or not. I began this with the class I took.
ReplyDeleteAs for your marching hooray. You are my inspiration. Yes, I am planning to visit SD next October, God willing. Probably going to have that surgery between now and then. Appointments in early September to help reach a verdict.
Blogging for memory, Good idea. I read books and can't remember if I've read them if i don't make a record. I began writing titles down in my journals years ago.
Still can't find one I read on the Green Goddess (absinthe) set in late 19th centuries and involving crazy artists. Excellent. I even searched through my Amazon records. Would help if I could remember the title.
Have a good day. Dianne
Hooray for free blog sites. I love Wordpress and don't have a rotten thing to say about it. Besides, it's free.
ReplyDeleteDo you know why I don't call my journal a blog? Because blog is short for weblog, which implies that it's updated daily. I don't update daily; I'm doing well if I do three posts in a week.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that my site, Movable Type, will eventually deteriorate as some others have. But it gives me some capabilities I can't find elsewhere. (Of course, if your computer doesn't have the same fonts as mine, you can't see 'em.)
I use Blogger. My house building blog was only a year long and I printed it out before I deleted it years ago. I do not think I printed with comments, but just wanted the memory of the process. My concern now is places in the cloud for photographs. I do not save everything, but I save a lot and I am already half way used up on Photobucket before I move to a more expensive level. Everything I have read says photos are only truely safe when printed to acid free paper from a high res printer.
ReplyDeleteI have been off the grid for the past several weeks and am just now catching up with your recovery from your surgery. Sounds as though you are doing well. I remember that all food tasted horrible for nearly 3 weeks. Pain meds and I did not agree. I found that the walking, marching was what made the most difference. Keep it up! Your positive outlook....laughter at the crazy, bad stuff....will win the recovery day. Thinking of you. Keep up the hard work and keep your smile!
ReplyDeleteHow did i miss that you had had a stroke? You, Dianne at Schmiddleys Scribblings and Retired English Teacher (not a stroke but recovering from brain injury from a fall) inspire me.
ReplyDeleteI started my blog pre-stroke because I have never had vivid recall of past stages of my life. I tried journaling, multiple times, but never stuck with it. So far, I have kept at blogging, even if sporadically.
Youre "Life is in the details" is a great idea that I have wanted to copy. Would you mind if I did?
I love WordPress. Considering I started blogging on Diaryland, it's a major step forward.
ReplyDeleteMy main blog is on Blogger, and my back up is Wordpress. Wordpress seems to have less glitches and less spams. However, I still like Blogger more with all the layout options.
ReplyDeleteI use Wordpress. It might as well be a small site since I have few readers. I have to laugh: every time I post I get these people who are following me, but of course, they are not. They just hope I will follow them. Too busy for that.
ReplyDeleteHappy to see you seem to be doing well.
I'm fairly sure I'm with Blogger but I try not to bother my tiny brain with that sort of stuff because I don't understand it and as far as I can understand it doesn't understand itself.
ReplyDeleteIf you see what I mean:)
I do a free Wordpress and it works for me. As you can see I blog less and less these days. I'm not sure why because I think I blogged for all the reasons you stated--and I had no friends when I moved here in 2005 and time on my hands. Suddenly, either I don't have as much time, or it takes me longer to do whatever it is that I do, and that saps up time for me. At any rate, I keep on trying from time to time. I'd hate to lose my "friends" I've met and feel I've come to know online. It's never easy to change the old and comfortable way we've been doing things, but I believe WP is user friendly enough that you'll be very happy with it--even without the upgrades that take it from free to additional cost.
ReplyDelete