[CaseCom]

I'm thinking about starting a blog. I've seen lots of positive comments on this forum about Blogger, but since I already have a .Mac account, it seems a shame not to use iWeb. Haven't seen much commentary here about iWeb for blogs except for icruise, whose comments seemed pretty mixed. So: Should I give iWeb a try or go with the tried-and-true Blogger? I don't know much HTML, so I'm looking for something WYSIWYG/drag-and-drop.

Has anyone tried the "new" Blogger?

[Mithras]

Use Blogger. iWeb should be shot on the basis of its fugly URLs alone.

[TheIceMan]

It's ironic that you post this because almost 1 year ago, I started my first website using iWeb. It was great and so easy. I was really happy...for about 2 days. Then frustrations set in, most especially with iWeb's (not sure if it still does this) tendency to convert certain text into .png files which slowed down your page load time.

Shortly after, I moved to Joomla (which is kinda tough to get the hang of if you're a newbie like me). But once Joomla was setup everything worked great.

But, I just missed the simplicity of Blogger. So i went back when Blogger finished beta-testing. I was content with Blogger but the "cons" started to weigh on me as I wanted a more "professional domain name." That and I recalled that Blogger was not that reliable a few months back when it kept crashing (it was fine when I was using it though).

So still trying to keep things "simple" I decided 2 days ago to transition from Blogger to WordPress. And so far it's GREAT! I decided to go with BlueHost as my host because they had a very simple 2-step, click here and it's good to go setup of WordPress. Amazingly simple setup!

But, out-of-the-box, Blogger would be the way to go. However, if you're interested in any flexibility at all, you might want to think about WordPress later on.

Blogger
Pro: Free, easy
Con: Not many options, new Blogger has limited template selection, cheesy "whatever.blogspot.com"

There's no "wrong" choice here, just personal preference. Best of luck and let us know what you decide.

[neyoung]

I started my blog about a month ago. I initially went with Wordpress, but for a newbie and my first blog it seemed a little complex. So I went to blogger and everything was super simple. I was up and running in minutes and making my first post. But, now that I've been at it a month I sort of wish that I had stuck with WordPress. There are some neat advanced things that WordPress can do.

It was probably a month or two since TheIceMan has used blogger, but since then they allow you to use your own domain name. Everything has been quite stable as far as I'm concerned. Sorry I can't compare Blogger to iWeb, but I haven't used iWeb. I would recommend starting out with blogger and if it meets your needs then great If its not quite powerful enough for you there is a way to import your blogger blog into Wordpress.

Good luck and happy blogging!

[CaseCom]

Thanks a lot for the replies. I went with Blogger, and the set-up was real easy, especially since I don't require a lot of bells and whistles. Check it out:

Oscar the Blog

Thanks again!

[DavoMrMac]

Well, I have been blogging for about 18 months now and have tried .Mac, Wordpress and Blogger.

Out of the three I now use Blogger, it seems the easiest to modify to do the things I need.

Wordpress is also very good and some friends of mine use it and have great sites.

My advise would be to try out both and see which you like best.

You can check out my site if you want to see what can be achieved at Geekanoids