Free blog websites?

[Epiphany]

I wasn't really sure where to post this question so I thought I would start here. I am super excited my husband surprised me with my "new mommy" gift early, a Nikon D7000! I enjoy taking pictures and would like to start a blog that would mostly be for family and friends. A place where I can post pictures and journal once our little one arrives etc. Also, maybe a separate blog that is more open to the public where I can post my more general photos. I've looked at flickr but really don't know anything about it. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[tirediron]

BlogSpot.ca?

 

[cgipson1]

Blog sites (free or otherwise)

http://www.techtrickhome.com/2013/01/top-20-best-free-blogging-platform.html

http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/

https://www.google.com/search?q=fre...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

[Buckster]

WordPress.com - Get a Free Blog Here

 

[brian_f2.8]

why not tumblr?

 

[Epiphany]

why not tumblr?

I have never used tumblr. I will look at it. Is it anything like Flickr?

 

[MOREGONE]

Flickr really isnt a blogging source, its a place to host pictures with some social tie ins.

Google+ is better suited for hosting pictures and sharing them, as well as staying in touch but is not a true blog. The problem with blog however is they are not geared towards hosting pictures (lots of pictures). If you're doing this for family a friends, honestly you could just use facebook. It's where your friends already are (I assume) and has decent support for galleries and picutres.

 

[Buckster]

The problem with blog however is they are not geared towards hosting pictures (lots of pictures).

That's really not true. I'll just talk a bit about the one I've recently been moving to and become familiar with: WordPress

WordPress has LOTS of templates for photography-geared blogs/web sites, and starts you off with 3 GB of hosting space for free. That's pretty hard to beat, and adequate for most users' needs, even photographers with lots of photos to post and display.

Like most blog sites, you can change the look and feel of your WordPress blog/site at will with a couple of clicks any time you want or, if you know some CSS and HTML, you can build your own template from scratch. I'd venture to say there are more templates for WordPress than for any other platform on the planet at present. That's pretty hard to beat too.

If you actually run out of that 3 GB they give you for free, you can upgrade to a hosted plan for like $20 per year and get 10 GB. If that's not enough, you can step up to 25 GB for $50 per year, and so on. If you need unlimited amounts, it's easy to get a host like BlueHost for about $6-$7 per month for truly unlimited space.

If you've been building your site up for some time, actually hit the 3 GB wall and want to go unlimited with an outside host, it's a pretty simple matter of porting your WordPress site over to that new host. BlueHost will even pay for a domain name of your choice (subject to availability, of course) as a signing bonus for a year, then it's regular domain name fees after that, which is dirt cheap also.

Definitely worth checking out.

 

[Epiphany]

Flickr really isnt a blogging source, its a place to host pictures with some social tie ins.

Google+ is better suited for hosting pictures and sharing them, as well as staying in touch but is not a true blog. The problem with blog however is they are not geared towards hosting pictures (lots of pictures). If you're doing this for family a friends, honestly you could just use facebook. It's where your friends already are (I assume) and has decent support for galleries and picutres.

I just don't trust Facebook anymore. They pretty much own everything you post.

 

[cgipson1]

Flickr really isnt a blogging source, its a place to host pictures with some social tie ins.

Google+ is better suited for hosting pictures and sharing them, as well as staying in touch but is not a true blog. The problem with blog however is they are not geared towards hosting pictures (lots of pictures). If you're doing this for family a friends, honestly you could just use facebook. It's where your friends already are (I assume) and has decent support for galleries and picutres.

I just don't trust Facebook anymore. They pretty much own everything you post.

Pretty much true wherever you go to a greater or lesser degree, unless you build you own site... and even that has risks!

 

[MOREGONE]

The problem with blog however is they are not geared towards hosting pictures (lots of pictures).

That's really not true. I'll just talk a bit about I've recently been moving to and become familiar with: WordPress

I do know Wordpress made some changes to galleries recently that I haven't looked into, but most of my experience and frustrations are with Wordpress. Wordpress is good for one or two pictures on the fly, but galleries leave a lot to be desired. It's not easy to reorder images and they often get out of order than what you expect. They have to be in the media gallery, you cant have them in folders or nested. I shoot events and galleries are something of a pain with plain old wordpress. What about that picture you upladed last year and need to find, little difficult with the media gallery IMO.

 

[Buckster]

Probably safe to say that a free blog site isn't suitable for everyone's needs. But for most folks, including a LOT of photographers, it seems to be working out pretty well.