There are so many free blog sites that anyone wishing to keep a blog can find one with the features they require.
LiveJournal
One of the oldest and largest sites for free blogs, LiveJournal encourages bloggers to develop communities. There are links in several areas that allow LiveJournal bloggers to add friends in order to keep up with the blogs that interest them.
LiveJournal is easy to use for most new bloggers, but it does place ads on each blog that is hosted by the site. The individual bloggers are not the recipients of the ad revenue.
Windows Live Spaces
The site, run by MSN, is a free blog site, though it refers to its blogs as "spaces." Each space is a combination of a blogs and social networking. Live Spaces has a lists function that allows bloggers to create lists of their favorite items within categories such as movies and books. Live Spaces also allows users to update their blogs with their cell phones.
Wordpress Free Blogs
Wordpress is one of the most popular free blogs because it comes with an enormous amount of free blog layouts that can be customized in just about any way imaginable. The main site offers free blog hosting within their site, or the blogger can use the Wordpress free blog templates on their own domain hosted elsewhere.
One of the major complaints about Wordpress blogs is that there are no ads allowed on any blog hosted on the site. Bloggers are free, however, to put ads on any Wordpress blog that is hosted on their own domain.
Blogger
Blogger is a site that offers free blogs complete with a variety of free blog templates and easy categorization. The site has fewer blog templates and fewer ways to customize each blog than Wordpress, but it is also simple to use and quick to set up. One common complaint is that the Blogger does not currently have a timestamp feature that would allow the blogger to time their post for a future date.
Some bloggers find that after beginning one blog they wish to change to another free blog site. Some free blog sites have a specific widget that allows blog posts to be transfered from one site to another. Check with the new site to see whther there is an importing feature that allows the transfer.
Once a free blog is set up, it's important to become familiar with the basics of running a blog and how to avoid libeling others.
Lizz Shepherd - I am a freelance writer specializing, for now, in Web writing. The Web is an enormous place and I have been carving out my own little ...
