Starting A Blog - Anyone here have one?

[Prog Snob]

After mulling over the idea for a while, I finally decided to say fuck it and go for it.  I did a little reading into what I needed to get started.  The only thing I'm missing is the domain name... I can't quite come up with anything yet.  As far as a hosting site I am going with Hostgator. 

Does anyone have experience with Hostgator and/or running their own blog?

[kirksnosehair]

I have a couple of blogs, but I host them myself. 


Most of my friends who have blogs and don't run web-hosting operations like I do    use Wordpress.com for hosting their blogs.  Wordpress is pretty much the standard for blogging and most blogging tools you find on the internet are basically imitations of Wordpress.com. 


You should be able to get any subdomain you want....(e.g. your-sub-domain-name.wordpress.com )  Just head over to Wordpress.com and sign up.

[Prog Snob]

I have a couple of blogs, but I host them myself. 


Most of my friends who have blogs and don't run web-hosting operations like I do    use Wordpress.com for hosting their blogs.  Wordpress is pretty much the standard for blogging and most blogging tools you find on the internet are basically imitations of Wordpress.com. 


You should be able to get any subdomain you want....(e.g. your-sub-domain-name.wordpress.com )  Just head over to Wordpress.com and sign up.

One of the recommendations from one of the articles I read was Wordpress.com.   Wordpress.org was a self-hosting site and from what I gathered, Hostgator would help with the setup of that.  Who do you use as your host if you don't mind me asking?

[kirksnosehair]

I have a couple of blogs, but I host them myself. 


Most of my friends who have blogs and don't run web-hosting operations like I do    use Wordpress.com for hosting their blogs.  Wordpress is pretty much the standard for blogging and most blogging tools you find on the internet are basically imitations of Wordpress.com. 


You should be able to get any subdomain you want....(e.g. your-sub-domain-name.wordpress.com )  Just head over to Wordpress.com and sign up.

One of the recommendations from one of the articles I read was Wordpress.com.   Wordpress.org was a self-hosting site and from what I gathered, Hostgator would help with the setup of that.  Who do you use as your host if you don't mind me asking?

My host is...the data center I work in.  One of the things we do at my company is web hosting.


Very specialized, though.  We are strictly a DotNetNuke partner.  All of the sites we host are built with DotNetNuke, which is a content management system built around Microsoft's ASP.NET and SQL Server architecture. 


We cater mostly to small and medium-sized businesses who want to have a website that they can edit themselves without having to know any kind of HTML or other scripting/coding languages.  Basically, we provide "turnkey" web solutions, including eCommerce.


I guess the biggest project we've done to date is the Daughters of Saint Paul website:


www.pauline.org


They sell about $80k per week of books/videos, etc out of that operation.  We programmed it and connected it in real time to their accounting software.  So, all of their brick & mortar book stores world wide are connected VIA an SSL VPN back to our data center where all of their accounting data is uploaded each night.  Then a program we designed for them formats that data for their Informix-Database - based accounting system and pumps it into their servers on a nightly schedule.  Biggest, most complex thing I ever undertook.


So, yeah, I'm probably not the host for you 


Checkout WordPress.com, though, it's a good service and free, unless you want bells and whistles

[Prog Snob]

    Got it. 

Thanks for the input though. I'm hoping to this into an almost full-time endeavor.

[hefdaddy42]

I do one, although I have become an infrequent poster, at best.  I use blogspot.

[senecadawg2]

I've checked out Super Dude's a couple times, but other than that I stay out of the blogging world.

[Sketchy]

I sort of started one a few weeks ago, mainly to see why people wrote them. It updates whenever I get excited about something enough to write about it...

...which is two or three times a week. It's fun just writing about something and seeing what happens.

[ColdFireYYZ]

I was going to start a music blog but I never bothered. I figured that there are so many out there already and no one would read it. It seems like the only music blogs that get any attention are ones with download links (which I'd never do).

[rumborak]

Thanks for the input though. I'm hoping to this into an almost full-time endeavor.

Now that's a different league though. For that you need to write stuff that people are interested in, which is a lot harder.

[Prog Snob]

I gather it would be much harder to associate with the masses and see what delights the taste buds of my audience.  Nothing pleases me more than to see someone derive pleasure from the written words I wrested from the voluminous valleys of my mind.