I've decided to start a blog for my Nightcallers project since the website I started really wanted to be a blog right off the bat. I'm using WordPress because it's included in my hosting package (though I realize they're all free) but playing around with the myriad settings reminds me, and not in a good way, of setting up a CafePress store, and setting up a mySpace page. Too many settings, too complicated, and too time-consuming to figure out even the simple stuff.

Is Blogger any better? Does anyone here have experiences with both (or any others) in terms of ease of use? Do I just need to buckle down and learn to love the learning curve?

If you want to, you can view my first entry at http://www.nightcallers.net/arthropoda, but it's nothing more than the first page of the website.

Comments and advice welcome!

i used to have a blog for a short while, but I prefer forums over blogs, but at the time, I used forumotion, and it was pretty good

I guess the question is, what about what you have there now do you not like?

Also make sure that your user agreement doesn't mean that you're giving up some rights to what you post.

I tried Blogger and then Wordpress, and liked Wordpress better--Wordpress had an app so I can blog from my iPhone!

Will, that's a helpful answer and more or less what I was looking for, just an opinion from someone with experience of multiple blogging platforms.

Robcat, it's not that I'm unhappy with what I have, but for just one example, I wanted a custom image for the header. After digging through help files and lots of editing options, the only thing I could find was an option to access royalty-free images from Flickr. No simple way to upload an image I created. I had to dig through the installed files and fiddle with the code, then ultimately had to rename my image with the name of the default image (a blue rectangle), delete the default image from the directory, and upload my image. I then restored the code changes I had made.

It would seem a simple thing to provide image dimensions and an upload button but that doesn't seem to be the case.

But I can't change the font of the title or flush it left or right without going back into the code, which is php (looks like javascript) and not html. And the title and subtitle have to be the same color. I tried deleting the title text and making the title part of the jpeg but that screwed things up.

I may be overlooking things, but that's my point, that the editing options could be simpler/better organized.

I'm sure though that once I've got a few options and add-ons set, it will (hopefully!) just be a matter of posting new entries.

yeah, check out forumotion.com and check out their blogs, they were far more customizable and easier to use than what you just described

Thanks, I'll take a look at that!

I've only made minor changes to the template I use on blogger, largely because it's fiddling with HTML code. They do have help files to tell you what to look for, sort of, but Blogger probably isn't an improvement over what you have.

Meh, I'll stick with this until I have a good reason not to. I realize that this is the sort of web functionality that I'll grok a bit more each time I go back to fiddle with it, so in for a penny in for a pound I guess.

As for your earlier question about ownership of content, I did read *most* of the user agreement and the ethos of WordPress is that it's completely, guaranteed, sign-on-the-dotted-line Open Source beginning to end and the user agreement pretty much states that any changes to the source code must be made freely available to anyone else, no selling or keeping tweaks or mods secret or anything.

I realize this doesn't deal with user content, but under the circumstances I think the content is probably safe, or as safe as anything is on these things we call the Internets.

The Wannabe Pirates website is a Wordpress site. There's a plug-in called Comicpress that makes it more customized for serving up both the comic and the blog. I've done all the customizing of the look of it via the dashboard control panel. Just a matter of finding out where the element you need to change is.

Like anything with computers, once you know how, it's easy!

Now I know who I'll be coming to with questions!

Hey mark, I'm trying to embed videos in my blog. I've been over all their help files but there's nothing there that walks you through the process. I did install one plugin that says it's loaded with video viewing functionality but it appears to only allow "interactive videos" whatever that is. I did upload some videos to my media library but when I try to insert them into the blog post it only adds the text title, no video or nothing. Do you have any clue about this?

The only videos I've embedded so far have been YouTube videos. (I posted them on YouTube first and then embedded them into blog posts.)

I'm guessing that some sort of plug-in would be needed. Not sure why. I just tried doing it myself and all it does is put a link to the Quicktime file.

Yeah, I just figured out how to embed YouTube vids and it worked fine. I don't know why WordPress gives you a way to build a media library, a link that sez "insert in post" or something, then, nothin! So, YouTube it is for now.

I've been experimenting with saving a movie out of Quicktime using "save for web", but I'm having a problem with the readme.html that it creates. It won't seem to open. Used to open in the past. Thinking maybe that you could use the code from that to embed it into the blog post...

Gerry,
there is a nice widget here for embedding videos into your wordpress blog:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vodpod-videos/

Thanks Will, there's a link there to another plug in as well (the WordPress video extension for Firefox) and they will probably both do what I want.

The thing that confused me is that the blog provides a way to create a media library but no clear way to embed videos that you upload. I ended up just using the embed code that YouTube provides and that works fine. And these other plugins also allow embedding of videos already on the web.

I just don't understand the purpose of the media library, and documentation is scant in the WordPress help files.

Thanks for the link.