WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com... [2]

This was going to be a guide (as suggested by [3] Johannes Ahrenfelt) as to how to set up a [4] Wordpress-powered blog. However, just as I was about to put fingers-to-keyboard I got word that the release candidate of Wordpress version 2.0 had just been released. That means that in the next few weeks the final version of Wordpress 2.0 will be released for general consumption, making my (potential) Wordpress 1.5 guide obsolete. Consequently, I’ve decided to point readers in the direction of blogs which take care of the hosting for you, rather than ones that you host on your own server. I will produce a guide for [4] Wordpress once version 2.0 is established and has a few useful plugins.

So then, a roundup of the likeliest suspects for non-installable. I’ve discounted [6] Typepad because it’s a paid-for service, but it certainly gets good reviews - so you might want to check it out…

MSN Spaces

We begin with a service which I use to host my (sporadically-updated) personal blog. It has random thoughts, links and family pictures on there. It’s has an insanely easy-to-use interface allowing simple image uploads and ties in rather nicely with MSN Messenger (if you use that, as I do). For an education-based blog, however, it may not be so ideal. It’s basically setup for the purpose for which I use it - a personal website. Default links to ‘Photo album’, ‘Music’, ‘Favourite Links’ etc. aren’t ideal for blogs that you’ll be using with pupils.

That’s not to say it can’t be configured to do that job, however. It’s just that it wasn’t designed for that purpose! The ‘Lists’ function could be used as a reading list or recommended websites for pupils, and the photo album could be used as a repository of course-related images, for example.

There is a moderate amount of advertising at the top of each [7] MSN Spaces-based blog. However, this being family-friendly Microsoft, the raciest content is a link to a dating site. There are no links to other blogs unless you create them, meaning that pupils are less likely to randomly drift off from the site…

In conclusion, I’d recommend [7] MSN Spaces to be used for the purposes of an education-related blog for novices who use computers mainly at work and for the odd email. It’s really easy to setup, can be tinkered with to an extent, and serves a purpose. Just don’t expect high degrees of customability or for your blog to look any different from any other [7] MSN Spaces blog!

Blogger

Now a subsidiary of Google, [10] Blogger’s friendly interface allows easy blogging from anywhere in the world - even from [11] mobile phones! The main problem with Blogger let me point out straight away - it’s these two little ‘features’ at the top-left and top-right of each blog:

There’s the potential for very strange young person’s mind-warping things to be on [10] Blogger-powered blogs and one click from your blog is all it takes for someone to get there. You’d be guilty by association!

That said, the chances of this happening are fairly small, and [13] Blogger certainly has a lot going for it. There’s scope to create some very colourful and individual blogs with genuinely useful and relevant features (e.g. Don Cumming’s [14] History Heaven, Ed Podesta’s [15] Cold War blog and Dafydd Humphrey’s [16] History@StanleyTech blog)

I used to use [10] Blogger for my personal blog but found that image uploading, whilst not exactly taxing, a whole lot simpler with MSN Spaces. We are focusing on blogs for educational purposes here, however, so this is not an issue.

Going back to my [10] Blogger account for the purposes of this guide, I was pleasantly surprised with the continuing improvements that are evident. There’s plenty of control over access and syndication settings for your blog (much more so than [7] MSN Spaces), there’s plenty of templates to choose from (the HTML and CSS of which you can modify), and you can even earn money through [20] Google Adsense intergration and post to your blog from Microsoft Word!

[10] Blogger, then, is my recommendation for the intermediate user. For those who know what an RSS feed is and what settings such as ‘Enable Comment Moderation?’ mean, this is the blog to use!

Yahoo 360°

I intended to include a brief overview of Yahoo’s new [22] Yahoo 360° service (currently in beta), but despite taking me through the registration process it prevented me from actually accessing my blog. So I find Yahoo’s offering impossible to comment upon at the present moment in time…

Livejournal

If Livejournal was a footballer it would a veteran experienced midfielder rather than a flashy new striker from overseas. It’s very much focused on content over style being the most mature of the blogs on review here. The basic options rather than the more visually-attractive ones are enabled by default. Although free, Livejournal allows you to purchase upgrades such as the ability to upload pictures. Given the need to upgrade your account to enable even this basic functionality, along with the unintuitive navigation within the control panel, I wouldn’t recommend Livejournal’s service.

Wordpress.com

And finally… you can actually have an installation of Wordpress hosted for you, and automatically upgraded when the latest stable version comes out! That means that as soon as version 2.0 is released your blog will be instantly up-to-date. I created a test blog for the purposes of this guide which seems to be already running version 2.0 (very nice!) That means Word-like formatting of posts, easy uploading of files (including images) and customization of themes (no messing about with HTML here!)

Although you can’t add in extra functionality through the use of plugins, it rivals Blogger for ease of use and visual appeal. That, along with the zero advertising, advanced options, and AJAX technology makes Wordpress.com my choice for all potential bloggers - from novices to the more advanced - who don’t want to set up a blog using their own web space. Check it out at [23] wordpress.com!

As ever, however, don’t just rely on my word - have a look at the following before you make up your mind:

• [24] ZDnet has a brief overview of some offerings
• The [25] Wall Street Journal has a rather wordy review of Blogger, Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces
• A review at [26] Tulsa Computer Society (!) has a image-rich review of several services
• [27] This website has a matrix comparing all the major blog software

Whichever service you decide upon, make sure you add a comment here so others can find your blog!

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