My name is Pamela Sweet, and I’m a blogaholic.  I admit that any time I hear about or discover new blogging software, my entire being wakes up and thrills at the opportunity to set up a free account.  Will this be the ultimate in blog software?  Will it do anything and everything I could [...]]]>

My name is Pamela Sweet, and I’m a blogaholic.  I admit that any time I hear about or discover new blogging software, my entire being wakes up and thrills at the opportunity to set up a free account.  Will this be the ultimate in blog software?  Will it do anything and everything I could ever want it to do?  What about ease of use and ultimate control?  I get bored quickly so does it have enough good themes and layouts to satisfy my desire for change?  If not, it will need to provide me with the opportunity to add and modify outside themes; full HTML and CSS control. 

One thing I’ve found in my blog software travels is that most do not allow you to add a forum or message board to your blog.  It is true that a lot of people like the power of control in the blogging setup where the blogger posts and people comment.  The blogger can choose whether or not to allow those comments to appear to the public.  In a forum or message board, chaos reigns and the blogger would have to spend a lot of time moderating.  We’ve talked about adding a message board to our Texty Ladies site but that will be some time in the future. 

Here’s a list of the blogware I’ve used and a few comments about each.  I’d love to hear about your experiences and preferences in this regard.

LiveJournal - Dreaming in Digital, created at LiveJournal, is my very first blog.  LiveJournal is fantastic.  It is extremely easy to set up an account and I love that there are so many themes to choose from.  LiveJournal is all about community with a plethora of groups to lurk at or join.  My only desire for LiveJournal is that they add widgets and other options you could place in the sidebars.

Blogger – My second blog, A Work In Progress, was created here.  Blogger is good and quite often one of the first blog sites people will try.  Just like LiveJournal, it is very easy to set up your blog.  Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough, but I wish it was easier to browse other blogs.  They do have “Blogs of Note” on the Dashboard, but what if I want to search by interest? 

WordPress – My third blog, A Curious Brew, is at WordPress and is currently being updated.  We also use WordPress for this Texty Ladies site.  Of the three I’ve listed so far, WordPress gives you the most bang for your buck (actually, it’s free).  Again, it is easy to set up, but it also has more options and gives the user more control.   You can add categories, widgets, text boxes, videos, podcasts, and many more goodies to your posts and sidebars.  There’s more control over comments and an added bonus:  you can assign more than one user.  It’s great for group blogs!  NOTE:  If you use an outside WP theme, be sure to look for one that is widget ready.

Vox – Vox has a cool look and is great for organizing and displaying photos, books, audios, videos, posts and comments.  The ability to create collections is another neat feature.  A collection is a convenient way to group together a set of assets for a particular topic.  For example, if you took a vacation, you could make a collection of the travel books you read and the pictures you took.  You could even add an audio or video file that you took sightseeing!  I recently started a blog at Vox, Of Questionable Character (what was I thinking?), but need to play around and add more to it.

Typepad – My first experience with Typepad was not a good one.  During the trial period, I had difficulties changing my theme and after repeated requests for help with no response, I canceled my account.  Typepad is not free but it does offer varying degrees of control for the user and has plenty of options.  You can go mobile, track your stats, add widgets and pages, and have complete control over HTML, CSS & JavaScript.  You can also integrate your other blogs and social networking sites.  Typepad also has more layouts to choose from than most other blog software.  I’ve decided to give Typepad another chance and am creating “Sweet Endeavors”, which I hope will be up and running soon!

I’ll be checking into more blog software and will report about them in a future post.  These will include Squarespace, BlogWare, b2evolution, Textpattern, and more.  Please let me know your thoughts on the software you’ve tried and any tips or advice you might have.  Thanks!!