What is the best webhosting company for WordPress bloggers?

I would personally love to hear all of your experiences, positive and negative, so please comment away!!

Please update all of your bookmarks and feed subscriptions to reflect the new location!

I’m very excited to have the site powered by WordPress for a number of reasons:

• I can reopen trackbacks on all my old posts (which I’m still in the process of doing) and allow pings on all new posts because WordPress’s anti-spam plugins will delete all the crap (meaning I’m not stuck wading through hundreds of spam a day trying to find legitimate trackback pings) and you will soon be able to trackback to any and all of my posts, restoring full blogging functionality to How to Blog (since you all know I think trackbacks are essential to the blogging experience!) It may be a day or two before all of the posts have been updated to allow pings — in the port from typepad, WP used typepad’s settings and had pings turned off for all posts and unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a plugin that will allow a mass change to all posts to allow pings (developers – there’s an idea for ya!) so I’m sitting here manually going through each post and checking the ‘allow pings’ box, so bear with me
• I can have subcategories!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I can finally have pagination controls (previous page, next page), making navigating the blog much easier (and something that TypePad was sorely missing).
• I can have an Archives page which displays Archives by month, by category, as well as an entire archive of every posting on How to Blog, essentially creating a sitemap so that you can more easily find what you’re looking for
• Speaking of sitemaps, I can use the Google Sitemap plugin to automatically generate a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap of How to Blogand automatically ping Google everytime a create or update a post
• I can save time by using plugins like Jerome’s Keywords to automatically create my technorati tags for me based on the keywords I’ve entered
• I can save time by using the autolink plugin to automatically setup the hyperlinks for me on phrases that I often use, like WordPress
• I can allow people to subscribe to my blog by email using the Subscribe2 plugin, where you can choose how often you want to be notified by email when I create new posts, and you can even specify which categories of posts you want to be notified about
• I can get MUCH better stats, since I’m running wordpress on my dedicated server on my webhost (Prohosters.com) and I get really detailed stats through the use of Sawmill
• I have a seemingly endless number of wordpress themes to choose from (I haven’t had time to figure out what I want to go with for the long haul — I really like the look of Semiologic, but it’s very hard to customize because it requires serious PHP knowledge and whatever theme I choose will likely be heavily customized when I’m done with it — OR, I might just take the plunge and create my OWN theme )
• I can allow people to subscribe to comments on any particular post, and they will then receive subsequent replies to that post through email
• I’m sure there are a million other things I’m forgetting, and I’ll write about them in due time. The one thing I am gonna miss from TypePad is their excellent WYSIWYG editor — WordPress’s is rather disasterous and I recommend that all users disable it. If you still want a wysiwyg interface for blogging, there are several excellent tools available including the Performancing extension for Firefox, the windows client BlogJet, etc

For now, I’ve got to get back to the ultra mundane task of updating all of my old typepad posts one at a time to show the new URL of where the post can now be found and turn of commenting on those posts. Then I get to go through all of my posts in WordPress one at a time and check the box to allow pings. Then I get to email all the people who have linked to my old site and ask them to update their bookmarks. And I get to pray that I don’t lose all of my traffic and the great search engine rankings that I had on my typepad version of the blog.

By the way, I do realize that blogging.typepad.com is certainly an easier URL to memorize than www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/ – however, I wanted to have it on my emilyrobbins.com domain – but not in the root of the domain as How to Blog is only one part of who I am. And, when I experimented with porting the typepad blog over to wordpress, google immediately started indexing the URLs (something I hadn’t anticipated to happen so quickly – especially since I hadn’t made a final decision as to what I wanted the URL to be – should I use a subdomain or a subdirectory, or should I give it it’s own domain) and rather than having to set up 301 permanent redirects I decided that this must be what fate wanted as the new How to Blog location – so here we are, and I look forward to being able to get back to posting (and I have many posts which need some updating including my theme list) when the drudgery involved with making the move is completed!

The main issue is how spam is handled. On TypePad, spam is a nightmare to deal with, whereas on WordPress spam is almost a non-issue (provided you are using the proper plug-ins like Spam Karma 2 for those running v1.5.x – or for those on WP 2.0, the included and revolutionary Akismet).

Then there are all the other easily customizable things. Like the look and feel of your site. Ok, so TypePad’s is easier to control without having to know any code — but really limited in comparison to WP. As my comprehensive wordpress theme list shows, there are now 615 free wordpress themes out there, and growing! OVER SIX HUNDRED. That’s a staggering amount of templates to choose from to give your blog it’s own unique flair. And they are all customizable as well (if you know some css) – and with WordPress 2.0, themes can be made customizable within the admin area by their authors such that bloggers can customize areas of the theme at will without ever touching any code!

Then there’s the issue of pagination. It’s quite simple – WordPress has it and TypePad doesn’t. By pagination, I mean those little links folks have grown accustomed to seeing on blogs that say “Next Page” and “Previous Page”. Don’t see them on this blog? That’s b/c TypePad doesn’t have that feature. TypePad bloggers get to choose the number of posts that will appear on their homepage, and after that – well, good luck navigating the blog b/c the only options are to do so through clicking on the categories or the monthly archives. TypePad doesn’t even have built-in search. And of course, WordPress does. (TypePad users should check out my article on how to make your typepad blog searchable).

And then there are the plugins. No small matter. WordPress has plugins that enhance it’s functionality for almost any thing you could want to do with it:

• Tagging plugins (such as Jerome’s Keywords or the Ultimate Tag Warrior) that provide an easy way to automatically tag posts with keywords for social bookmarking systems such as Technorati, del.icio.us, and Flickr. This means more traffic for your blog. Tags also provide a whole new way for readers to interact with a blog. For example, Jerome’s Keywords makes it so “readers can click on a post’s keyword/tag link to see other posts with the same tag. It’s a simple but effective way of letting users find content that interests them.”. You can even create a local tag cosmos.
• Post related plugins, such as the ability to display the top 10 most popular posts in your sidebar, or the ability to show a list of related posts when viewing an individual post
• Comment related plugins, such as giving users the ability to display gravatars in their comments and allowing blog readers to subscribe to a particular post’s comments
• There are just WAY too many ways in which plugins expand the functionality of WordPress way beyond the capabilities of TypePad to even discuss here. And from what I’ve been hearing about WP 2.0, which provides added hooks making it even easier for programmers to create even more fantastic plugins in the future, the possibilities seem limitless.

Customization of where you ping to notify the world that you’ve updated your blog — WordPress has it, and (you guessed it) TypePad doesn’t. The workaround with TypePad if you want to use a service like pingoat, is to paste the URL for pingoat’s RPC server into the Trackback area for each and every post, each and every time you update it.

And while this isn’t an issue for me in choosing a blogging platform, the issue of cost still needs to be brought up in any review. Again, it’s simple – WordPress is free, and TypePad isn’t. Of course, the full version of WP with all of it’s glory and customizable options (including access to all free themes and plugins) requires you to have a web hosting server with mysql support (which most do). Which means it really isn’t entirely free b/c now you’re paying for web-hosting. But if you do want entirely free, WordPress.com offers that — and while it’s a really dumbed down version of WP, it still offers some things that TypePad doesn’t, like sub-categories (however, it doesn’t allow you to run adsense ads on your site – you get what you pay for with wordpress.com).

Then there’s ease of use when posting. When it comes to blogging editors, WordPress 2.0 finally has a built in WYSIWYG editor (something TypePad has had all along, and which I think every blogging tool should offer). The only problem is that WordPress’s wysiwyg editor is kinda buggy. See this problem that I encountered on my WordPress 2.0 test blog. However, I generally use an external windows client (BlogJet) to post to my blogs, which has it’s own WYSIWYG editor that’s better than both of them. But you also need to take speed into account when you talk about ease of posting. WordPress is very speedy when creating or updating posts. TypePad is very sluggish, especially if you are sending trackbacks to a large number of sites.

Want stats for your blog? Well TypePad only shows you referrers from the past 24 hours. That’s it. And not only that, but it is slow as molasses

Now there are a few areas in which TypePad sort of shines in comparison to WordPress, with the main one being maintenance and upgrading. I say sort-of, because sometimes TypePad has outages and when that happens there ain’t a thing you can do about it. On the other hand, every time WordPress comes out with an upgrade, it can sometimes be a major pain in the rear to install it, wreaking all sorts of havoc over your blog (although sometimes the upgrade process is totally smooth). All of that customizability that WP offers through themes, plugins, etc, makes for more things that can get broken every time there’s an upgrade. And sometimes it seems like those upgrades come every few days (like after the release of WordPress 1.5 when there were numerous minor point releases that were required updates because they pertained to security flaws which seemed to come out every few days!) And when there’s an upgrade, you’re the one that has to install it (unless you’re using a free wordpress host like blogsome, but then you’re at the mercy of them deciding which themes and plugins are available to you, and when and if they’re going to do an upgrade – right now they’re still using WP 1.5). When TypePad does an upgrade, it’s behind the scenes and you find out about it in the TypePad news (unless the upgrade wreaks havoc on their servers, in which case you get the joy of TypePad outages, the inability to post to your blog for sometimes days on end, etc – but ultimately they fix it, and it’s up to them, not you, to fix it).

All of this makes me want to move this blog and all of it’s posts (and future posts to come) over to wordpress on my own server at emilyrobbins.com. Which brings me to my conundrum (and the possible state of limbo). Is it worth moving an existing site that gets over 1000 visitors a day and is ranked well in the search engines over to another server, URL, and blogging system entirely, possibly losing all of my backlinks and high pagerank that I spent so much time in generating? And if so, should I wait until WordPress 2.0 has ironed out some more of the kinks (there are currently problems with trackbacks, which I think is a rather major issue, among other things) before proceeding?

WordPress 1.5.2 works great and is a very stable release. But I know I’ll eventually want to move to WordPress 2.0.x — it’s new features are just too enticing. And I also know that I do not want to have to deal with doing the kind of major upgrade that going from 1.5 to 2.0 entails on a website that is this important to me (I just don’t have the time deal with it in case something goes wrong with the upgrade, and there have been far too many reports of people having trouble with the upgrade for me to risk it). But I’m getting so damn sick of TypePad’s limitations, and even more so of managing all the spam (I have to have all of my trackbacks and comments moderated because of the vulgar spam that people try to put through a zillion times a day – an issue that I wouldn’t have to deal with if I were using WordPress instead).

So what should I do? Should I hold off on doing any more posting until WordPress 2.0 comes out with a more stable version and then move the whole site over to WP 2? Should I just take the plunge now, and hope that the trackback issues don’t affect me too much until they are resolved? But what if I lose all of my traffic as a result?Should I just leave things as they are right now and stick with TypePad for ‘How to Blog’??

What to do? What to do??????

Update: I’ve taken the plunge now that WordPress 2.0.1 has come out and moved How to Blog over to http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/ so please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!

By pagination, I mean the and buttons that many bloggers and blog readers are accustomed to seeing at the bottom of a blog page (a feature that is built into WordPress, for example). TypePad gives you the option of customizing how many posts appear on a page, but no way to easily navigate to posts beyond those appearing on the front page. For example, the oldHow To Blog site is set to display 10 posts on the front page. But when users visit the site and read through those posts, and want to see the rest of what I’ve written, they have only 2 options, neither of which is optimal:

1. View each category one at a time
2. Go through the monthly archives

I had put it on my personal ‘to do’ list to figure out how to add Next and Previous links to the buttom of my TypePad pages, and when I finally decided to tackle the project and couldn’t figure it out on my own, I submitted a support ticket to Six Apart asking for help with it. I wrote:

WordPress has built in previous / next page links at the bottom of every page. This makes their blogs much more easy to navigate, especially for beginners. As each page only contains a certain number of posts, without having next and previous buttons it’s hard for people to easily navigate the blog.

In addition to making this a feature request, I’d also like to know what code I should use in my advanced templates in order to implement this on my blog on How to Blog.

Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
Emily Robbins

The response I got back from TypePad Customer Support was astounding (bold added by me):

Hi Emily,

Currently TypePad doesn’t offer pagination (Next Page and Previous Page links), so there isn’t any code that I can offer you to do this.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. We are always looking for ways to enhance TypePad for our users, so we will keep this in mind as a possible future feature for the system.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

Excuse me for the double-take, but NO CODE AVAILABLE TO DO THIS? How can this be when SixApart themselves acknowledged the importance of pagination features in their own article on Six Apart Pronet entitled “Building on Movable Type Part 3: Creating Pagination Controls”, wherein they say (again, bolding is from me):

Pagination controls are sufficiently ubiquitous that our own developers saw the value in creating a reusable mechanism for creating the links developers should all be too familiar with: “next page,” “previous page,” “last page,” “first page” and “you are viewing results X to Y out of Z.” This reusable framework is not only accessible within Movable Type, but by plugins as well.

So apparently Six Apart thinks that pagination controls are so ‘ubiquitous’ that we’d be ‘all to familiar’ with them, and they are not only built into the functionality of Movable Type but also accessible by MT plugins. GREAT. For Movable Type users.

So how come when SixApart created (and updated and updated) TypePad, this “ubiquitous” functionality was somehow forgotten?

Update: for those of you who click the link to my old blog at typepad to see the lack in pagination functionality, the template for the site has been changed to make it easier for folks to see the full URL for my new posts at the new site, making for a pretty ugly site. It didn’t use to look like that, but it’s okay that it’s ugly – none of you are supposed to be using that site anymore b/c I moved over here, remember

As mentioned before, I’ve done a clean install of WordPress 2.0, and while I’ve been told that much has been done in the underlying code base to provide for the possibility of future themes and plugins that are more spectacular than ever, those themes and plugins don’t exist yet, WP 2.0 itself is still way too buggy, and from an end-user perspective I just don’t see that much that’s new and exciting to compell anyone to want to upgrade.

Yeah, the new user interface is prettier. And it’s nice to have a built-in WYSIWYG plugin, but that too is quirky and WYSIWYG plugin options already existed for 1.5.x users who wanted them. The built-in spam plugin of Akismet is pretty darn cool, BUT it requires you to register at WordPress.com in order to get an API key to use it, and apparently if you use it too much you’ll be required to get a commercial license for it (and there’s some talk about the ethics of packaging a somewhat commercial product like Akismet with an opensource free product like WordPress). Not to mention the fact that there were already some pretty amazing spam fighting plugins available for WordPress 1.5.x that now don’t work properly in WordPress 2.0 (like SpamKarma2, for example). The purported benefit of Akismet over plugins such as SpamKarma2 is that it is always 100% up-to-date and never requires any upgrades.

I’ve no doubt that, eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later), the bugginess of WordPress 2.0 will be resolved, and some amazing 2.0 specific themes and plugins will start to appear that will tantalize us to make the switch. But until then, I’m staying put.

Update: I’ve ported How to Blog to WordPress 2.0.1 and am thrilled to have done so! (Although the process of changing blog platforms and URLs is a nightmare of tedious endless little annoying tasks) Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to reflect the new, permanent location at http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/

Those days are over!

A company called Mobile Edge has created a line of “designer elegant computer carrying cases that address a woman’s needs. Designed by women for women, these fashionable bags will protect and carry your computer in style.” And they’re not kidding – take a look at some of these beauties:

Mobile Edge The Milano – Large

Mobile Edge Suede Computer Tote

“Superior SafetyCell™ computer protection compartment , dedicated cell phone pocket and zippered interior pocket , detachable cosmetics/accessory pouch, stylish fittings and self-healing zippers, and EZ-Access ticket pocket. Holds notebooks with up to 15″ screens”

Mobile Edge Komen Paris Backpack

“This is a truly beautiful and comfortable backpack with computer protection, multiple pockets for organization and it supports a great cause!” 10% of sale is donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. It’s got dedicated safety cell computer protection, a seperate section for files, books, and magazines, AND a removable accessories/cosmetics pouch.

Mobile Edge Madison Tote

“This stylish design will never be mistaken for a “computer case”! The Mobile Edge designers have outdone themselves by creating an exterior that is a true classic while creating an interior that is pure funtion.” Detachable cosmetics/accessory pouch, zippered interior pocket, stylish fittings and self-healing zippers, durable metal feet, and of course a Dedicated Superior SafetyCell™ computer protection compartment make this tote unbeatable.

You can find Mobile Edge Women’s Laptop Bags at discounted prices over at eBags.com (where they even have user reviews for some of the bags, all of which have been rated very highly). On top of that, right now they’re having some sales – choose the promotion that provides the better all around deal for you

• $20 OFF $75 Handbag Purchases at eBags.com
• 10% OFF Plus Free Shipping on all Orders at eBags.com

I’m so psyched – and all of these wonderful bags have lifetime warranties, and ship for free (with a 60 day return policy and FREE return shipping costs, too if you order from eBags – talk about awesome customer service)!!

I’m ordering one of each so I can figure out which one I like the best, looks the most ‘me’ when I see it in person, and is the most comfortable, and then I’m returning the rest. Oh, who am I kidding – I’ll probably keep at least two. Like many other women, I’ve a bit of a purse fetish. A woman’s gotta have options after all (some days I might want to use a gorgeous backpack, others days a stylish over the shoulder tote). OK, so I’ll keep 2 and return the other. Gotta love shopping from home!!

BTW – I’ve heard reports of people having problems with permalinks and trackbacks, but haven’t experienced them myself on a new (i.e., not upgraded) install of WordPress 2.0 (and I’m using custom permalinks w/o problems). Could someone who IS having problems with these areas please clarify what the issue is?

Either email me at howtoblog (at) gmail.com or, preferedly, comment on this post. Thanks in advance, faithful readers. I appreciate your input!

I know that those of us who want to be on the bleeding edge will disregard all of this and upgrade to 2.0 because it’s cool and simply to have the latest (if not the greatest – although that remains to be seen) version. But for those fence-sitters, here’s some added info you might want to have in making your decision as to whether or not to upgrade your working version of WordPress 1.5.2 that you’ve been happily using to the new WordPress 2.0.

Here are some reports of problems with WordPress 2.0:

• Something Unpredictable has an article entitled, “What’s Already Broke in 2.0”
• Ryan Duff writes about how and why he downgraded from WordPress 2.0 back to WordPress 1.5
• 24fc wrote a detailed diatribe about why he’s “mightily disappointed” in WordPress 2.0 (including problems with trackbacks and permalinks) over in the support forums
• Brendan details problems he encountered in trying to upgrade to WordPress 2.0, (although he now seems to have made some progress in the upgrade, and is actually working on creating a WP 2.0 Theme) summarizing that:
  

  “If you use WordPress as standard, the upgrade should, more or less work. If you use cat2tag, ultimate tag warrior or deviate away even just a smidgen from the standard install (and lets face it, an increasingly large base of the WordPress community does) – then expect things to break.. badly.

  In my case the upgrade took a horrible toll on the database – the new WP db version is not backwards compatible – if you take the ‘upgrade’ path, perform a backup first or the results will be, well, unpleasant.”

And then there are others who have documented why they’re not upgrading:

• WordPress 2.0… Who Cares?, which provides an extremely detailed feature by feature list of why TheBisch hasn’t found a compelling enough reason to upgrade. In sum – he doesn’t think the new features are ‘all that’. He also points out that a lot of what’s new in WP2.0 pertains to code in the back-end which is designed to make things worlds easier for WP developers (those folks who create all the wonderful plug-ins we all can’t live without, as well as those who make the themes and templates which then personify our blogs). That’s great for developers, but for those who are blogging it doesn’t do them a spec of good JUST YET. First the developers need to use all those fabulous new hooks, etc to create plug-ins and themes which are compatible with v2.0, and that’s gonna take some time (even if it is easier for them to do than in v1.5). But it does mean that down the road we can expect newer and greater plug-ins with features we might never have even imagined possible – we just have to give the developers time to do their genius stuff. And in TheBisch’s mind, until that happens and bugs are hammered out, he doesn’t see a reason to bother with the upgrade.
• Phu Ly, an accomplished WP 1.5 Theme(Gentle Calm, Flex, Gespaa..) and Plug-in author writes Why If..Else has not been upgraded to WP 2.0
• Tamba2, who actually wrote one of the upgrade guides, is actually NOT upgrading himself and posts his reasoning here

If you’re not upgrading, Asymptomatic would like to know why not, and asks that you comment on his post to provide your own reasons for the choice not to upgrade (or upgrade problems that you’ve personally encountered) – to date, there are 106 responses to that post and many of them are rather informative — I’d highly recommend anyone considering upgrading give this post and it’s comments a good read.

In a response to a post by Phu Ly, Asymptomatic wrote the following giving his take on all the comments on his post regarding upgrading to 2.0

“It’s certainly not for everyone.

To generalize on most of the answers I’ve read so far, the response is one of:

1) I’m not upgrading because my favorite plugin/theme doesn’t work.

2) I’m not upgrading because there is no benefit to me over what I have

3) I’m not upgrading because of flaws in the development/testing/release process for which I’ll wait for patches.

Any of these could also factor heavily into one’s decision to upgrade some blogs and not others.”

All in all, there have been a lot of people saying there’s just too much work and too many chances of problems incurring, coupled with too little incentive for them to do the upgrade. However, many of these same folk have said that they would use WordPress 2.0 if they were doing a fresh install for new blog.

As for me, I feel I owe it to the WP team, as well as to all of my blog readers to perform an upgrade on at least one of my WP 1.5 blogs so that I can report back what my own experiences with it were and whether I’d choose to do it again on other blogs. And I *will* do this. However, given the reports of time consuming problems that could be encountered, and that I’m super short on time b/c I’m crazy behind in my work that pays the bills, it could be a few days or even longer before I can tackle this project.

So I still have no personal comments on the upgrade path… but I can tell you that doing a fresh install of WordPress 2.0 is exactly as easy as it was with 1.5 — taking literally seconds to complete once you’ve uploaded the files to your webhost and set up a mysql database for it (which your webhost can usually do for you).

The new UI looks VERY much like that over at WordPress.com, although it’s notably missing the ‘Feedback’ button for sending hugs & bugs. Not sure why you wouldn’t want to keep that in the hosted version of WP, especially since the user community at large doesn’t know how to enter bugs into WordPress’s tracking system.. The new user interface is very professional looking, and a little nicer on the eyes in this user’s opinion.

Anyhow, while others have complained about it, I like the new WYSIWYG interface (which is easily turned off for those who aren’t interested or don’t need it). Personally, while I can code HTML with the best of them, when I’m blogging I just want to write, and the easiest way to do that and have things be formatted the way I want them to is with a WYSIWYG editor. While WP 1.5 had wysiwyg plugins available, they seemed to slow down my server enormously and I resorted instead to using BlogJet’s window’s client to do all of my WP posts in a rich text environment. The one bummer was that when I clicked on the icon to insert a hyperlink, the window that popped up was too small to fit all of the hyperlink contents into it, and was not resizeable. Perhaps this is a browser specific problem (I’m using Firefox 1.5 on Windows), but that’s a rather big problem considering that links are half of what bring blogs alive. Any other Firefox users experiencing this?

I’ve also started playing around a little bit with themes, and thus far I’ve only tried a few wordpress 1.5 themes, but so far so good in that they’ve all worked in wordpress 2.0. Granted, I only tried 6 so far (Aesthetic 1.5, akhdian 1.1, Almost Spring 1.0, Amsterdam Nights 1.5, Anthurium Mix, and Batavia 1.5.1.1), but I’ll test more and report back later. Alas, one of my favorite themes, Semiologic, had many of its included plugins broken by WP 2.0, and while a new version (Semiologic v3.2) that works with WordPress 2.0 is purported to be available, I’ve yet to find a download link for it (and have emailed the author, the ever-brilliant Denis De Bernardy) to find out where the download link is (or when it will be available)

The much hyped uber-spam killing mechanism aka the plugin Akismet is built into the install, but needs to be activated by the user before it works – and that user must first create a wordpress.com account in order to get an API key that will be needed in order to use the Akismet plugin. Personally, if “included anti-spam plugins” are touted to be one of the features of the WordPress 2.0 release, one shouldn’t need to register anywhere in order to be able to utilize them – and they should be activated by default (just my 2 cents).

When I have more time to delve further into WP 2.0 (and to perform an actual upgrade to one of my existing blogs), I’ll post here as always.

WordPress.com deserves it’s own review, although it’s currently still in beta form – albeit a very usable beta. When I’ve time do a detailed write-up of my WordPress.com experiences.

The bare bones explanation is that WordPress.com offers the a newer, beta version of WordPress that you don’t need to install on your own server. Instead, you just sign up and immediately get a subdomain on WordPress.com (like http://blogging.wordpress.com). You can login and start blogging right away – it’s ease of use is beautiful for the novice blogger. It supports categories (and subcategories), trackbacks, and all the other trappings that I view as being necessary for any blogging tool. It has a WYSIWYG interface with a rich text editor, as well as the ability to edit the HTML directly. It also allows you to upload pictures and then drag and drop them into your posts. In short, it’s super easy to use, and changing the presentation of your blog takes about two clicks (click on Presentation, and then choose the theme you want).

The shortcomings are that there are very few themes offered for use, and you cannot customize the themes yet (you can’t even specify the font color – supposedly changes to this are in the works, as mentioned above it is still in beta). You also cannot add additional themes or plugins as you can with the full version of WordPress (which requires installation on your on webhost w/a mysql database).

So what you get is a blogging platform that is VERY easy to use, and very slick, but rather limiting for expert bloggers.

Also of note for the many bloggers who hope to earn some money through their blogs, is that WordPress.com currently does not currently support adding Adsense code to your blog entries, so those looking to monitize their blogs should look elsewhere (at least as of this writing).

For newbie bloggers, WordPress.com could be the blogging tool you’ve been waiting for. And it’s FREE! If you don’t care about customizing your templates, it sure beats the pants off of Blogger, even in it’s beta form. More experienced bloggers should check it out, if only to be able to be part of the creation of the next version of WordPress – there is a Feedback button where you can submit ‘bugs and hugs’ as well as any suggestions of what you think WordPress.com needs to be a more fully functional and customizable blogging tool, and suggestions are often implemented at a rapid rate.

Normally I’d say that’s a good thing, but apparently they’ve been a little overzealous in their cleansing of the system and many individuals are reporting that their legitimate, hand crafted Blogger blogs that they spent much time on have been deleted without warning or explanation.

The English Guy has a post entitled Google/Blogger Deleting Real Blogs that I’d highly recommend reading if you’re a current Blogger user or considering using their free service.

A thread at the Blog Party forum suggests that Google is targeting bloggers that have multiple blogs which link to each other. This is a tactic which many legit bloggers do and is a major part of how the whole blogosphere works. It is also a tactic that is used by sploggers. But that in and of itself should not be a reason to go on a search and destroy mission for all bloggers who interlink their sites. The logic in that is faulty – just because a tactic is used by sploggers doesn’t mean that everyone who uses that tactic IS a splogger.

So if you’re using Blogger and you have multiple blogs which you like to link to each other, you might consider porting your posts over to another system, such as TypePad or WordPress.com, before you wake up one day to find your blogs gone and have to go through the nightmare of trying to reach support personel (which has been reported to be very difficult) and proving that your blogs are legitimate.

Consider yourselves warned..

From what I’ve read, wordpress.com is, more or less, a hosted version of WordPress that could give TypePad even more of a run for it’s money

more: a WYSIWYG editor (a huge deal for those less technically inclined and lacking in HTML knowledge), a new backend with a blue-themed template that is “WAY better than the standard 1.5 one”, recent wordpress.com posts (competes directly with TypePad’s “Recently Updated Weblogs” and would be a welcome addition to WordPress), resizeable text box for writing posts, etc

less: users can’t edit templates, not many plugins come preinstalled and you can’t use any that aren’t already there

Accounts are currently strictly invitaion only, and I actually just entered a contest to win a wp.com invite (which hopefully I can get so I can check it out and write my own review for you guys here at How to Blog!)

Once you post the specifics of the project you need help with, coders will then bid on your ‘job’ and you can decide who you want to hire based on their bid, the feedback they received from other users on other projects they’ve completed, etc.

From their website:

Need a coder to help you create the next ‘killer app’ or answer questions? Just post your program or question here and coders from around the world will email you bids on doing the work.

You can review each bidder’s resume and reputation online, and when you’re ready to make your decision, you can rent your personal, expert, coder with just a few clicks! Its that simple!

Posting a bid request is free, and you are under no obligation to accept any bids sent to you unless you choose to. Once you accept a bid, you will place your payment into escrow. The money is not released to the coder, till they complete the work according to your original specification. There are no service charges or finders fees for buyers.

On the flip side, got skills? Flaunt ‘em and earn cash!

Looking to earn extra income using your hard-won technical skills? Rent a Coder lets you locate and bid on coding projects and questions from around the world! By completing a free registration, you can publicize your skills on the online resume system and receive emails as new bid requests come in.

So those of you who are creating all those great free themes and plug-ins (which I hope you’ll continue to offer for the sake of the blogging community), you may wanna consider listing your talents at Rent A Coder and earning some extra $$ through freelancing.

I just did.

This is a great step in the right direction for Blogger, as users will now be able to have multiple images within the body of a single post, rather than 1 image per post as was required with Picasa and Hello Bloggerbot.

Still need categories and trackbacks before it is a truly competitive blogging platform – you listening Google?

(BTW, I’m sorry for the lack of posts and updates to this blog as of late. My fiance lost his job last month so I’ve been working my butt off just trying to make my mortgage payments and haven’t been able to give “How to Blog” as much attention as I’d like to or it deserves. Wish us luck with getting our feet back on the ground financially so I can breathe a little easier and get back to writing about How to Blog!)

Pros

• no ads (yet…whether that’s because it’s still in beta is unknown)
• blogroll feature
• ability to moblog (publish to your blog from your cell phone)
• “has most of the features to keep you a happy blogger”
• entries published in RSS 2.0 feeds

Cons

• Main focus seems to be on socializing/community building aspect. However, currently not enough members for this to be considered a feature at the moment. And is there really such a need for yet another social networking utility with Friendster, Orkut, Hi5, etc?
• Photo management inferior to that of Blogger, and that says a lot since I personally think Blogger has prettty crappy photo management
• dull user interface
• inferior to msn spaces (which most people say sucks, so that can’t be good news about Yahoo360)
• nothing new and innovative (yet)

Javed is also offering up a limited supply of Yahoo 360 invites to those who comment on his post, so if you’re looking to give Yahoo 360 a spin for yourself, you’d best head over to his full review

Decided to check out myblogsite’s free blog service. So far, I’m not impressed. I created my account, logged in, and realized I’d specified the wrong time zone for myself. Should be easy to fix – but it’s not. There are tabs on the top of the page, some of which are just ads, one is for your blog, one entitled ‘admin login’ (except I’m already logged in, and clicking it doesn’t provide any setup options), ‘help’, and ‘reader account’ (which allows you to set whether email notifications are sent when a site visitor posts an article or comment). Where’s the place to modify my settings?

So I clicked the ‘help’ tab. Up pops up a window (last revised 1/6/2005, so you know they’re not regularly working on this..), with a Dec 22, 2004 link that says they’ve “Updated and reorganized the Settings & Security section”. Now you’d think this would help me fix my setup, right? I clicked the link, only to get a help page that says, “From the Settings & Security tab, the following options are available from the Publishing Defaults page….” Excuse me? What Settings and Security tab??? Sure don’t see one in the account I just created.

Even worse, I decide to click on the help links for changing the layout of the blog. Here I’m told: “To change your column layout: From the Look & Feel tab, click the Layout link at the top of the page…”. Um, yeah, I’d love to – but there’s no Look & Feel tab, just like there’s no Settings & Security tab.

I could spend more time trying to get this to work, but you know what – I’ll pass. I’m pretty technically savvy, and even I couldn’t figure out how to customize my blog. Oh, and did I mention that the blog I created, which only has its default post on it, is slow to load, too?

I’m giving myblogsite a big THUMBS DOWN, with initial impressions saying its not worth bothering to fully evaluate this blogging software. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, as it’s always nice to have more choices of free blogging platforms, especially with free hosting, so comment away if I should give it another look.

Update – the help files and the demos all reference blogware.com, which supposedly has all the features that myblogsite purports to have – except its not free. You’ve got to find a reseller, and pay a monthly fee. They’ve got a free trial, and I’ll explore that when time permits, but it would appear that the free hosting on myblogsite.com (which is powered by blogware) has been abandoned by its creators for the pay-for-service blogware. Funny, you’d think they’d stop paying for ads for myblogsite.com on google then (since I found the site in the first place in the google ads listed on my own blog!) Further inspection indicates that FortuneCity is hosting blogware powered blogs for free on myblogsite in exchange for a slew of unrelated ads on your site, including the ever-tacky ‘lose weight’ ads. Yeesh.

UPDATE 3/24 – It would appear that on the day that I created my account at myblogsite, the control panel was not functioning properly, and as a result I was unable to access their dashboard. I got a really rude email from someone regarding my review of myblogsite, so I decided to give it another look. When I logged into myblogsite today, the admin control panel WAS working, although several of the changes that I made didn’t ‘stick’ even after clicking the save button. Changes to the layout (like removal of the ‘photos’ component) didn’t update on the blog itself. The site still has slow load times. I have too much on my plate right now to try to fully evaluate this free blog host, especially if it’s as glitchy as it’s been seeming to me. However, I will do a full eval on this when time permits. If the site functionality starts working consistently, then this COULD be a good competitor to TypePad (their drag and drop of components for changing the layout is quite similar actually, except myblogsite is free). If you want to try it yourself, the first thing I’d recommend doing is getting those tacky ads off there. The way to do it (if the system is in the mood to let you), is to click on the Look & Feel tab in the dashboard, then click on Layout, then deactivate the component entitled Favorite Links (they’re not YOUR favorites – they’re cheesy ads), click Save, then click the Header tab, and deactivate the Blog Control component that is currently sitting in the left column, and click Save again. Now your blog will look more like YOUR blog – w/o FortuneCity’s ads for weight loss, etc, all over it.

Apparently initial signup for the service (which is in beta) is by invite only. If I’m able to secure an invite, I’ll let y’all know how their blogging tools size up compared to TypePad, MT, WordPress, et al.

Anyone have any Yahoo connections so I can get on the beta list?