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Which blogging service to use?

What do I need out of a service?

Moving past the straightforward stuff that they will all have, such as ease of use (high), scalability (great!), choice of templates (wide!!), etc., there are a few features that I would like in order to future proof what I am doing.

First, the service must allow me to use my own domain for the off-chance that the provider suddenly decides to cease business (it has happened before) or jacks up their prices. Secondly, and continuing in the same vein, it should be possible to extract or back up the blog. Thirdly, it would be useful, but perhaps not essential if the first two are given, to be able to host some code or extensions on the site. Fourthly, ideally the software service should be open source or be able to be run independently of the service provider if required. Finally, free is good.

Let's see how the two services stack up



Service


Can use own domain name?
Free
Paid
Free
External back up or export function?
Yes
Can host code?
Limited
Limited
Yes
Open source/independent hosting?
No
Yes
Yes
Free to use?
Yes
Yes
No

As you can see Wordpress comes in two flavours; one a hosted browser version [.com] and the other a full-strength enterprise solution that requires hosting on a server [.org]. General reading indicates that newbies often start with Blogger, while Wordpress has all the growing room any site would need, but a higher learning curve. Wordpress.com makes the learning curve shallower but at the cost of limiting the software options and introducing quite a few paid-for services. Note that although Wordpress.org is a free download, the hosting cost for the web server means that, overall, use of the package does entail a cost.

The basic trade-off is no code and free on Blogger and absolute software freedom and up-front costs on Wordpress. As an out-and-out beginner I can live without the extras for now and if I really require them in the future it is possible to migrate from Blogger to Wordpress.

So decision made, Blogger to start with. But first I need to obtain a domain.

BTW, why write about choices and blog set up when I have already done all this? Because I am writing this on OneNote, God's own notetaking software, until I get it sorted.
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