Can anyone recommend a good blogging site....

[Digz]

....one thats preferably free and that I can upload images to.

I have been keeping a record of my astronomy jollies and would like to post it online for friends etc to see, so any recommendations are greatly received

TIA

[TopHouse]

How about a facebook fan page?

[Astro_Baby]

Make sure you have backups of everything. In my time I have seen 3 blog sites simply disappear (and at least 4 DiY webpage sites and of course MSN and Yahoos famous cull) they simply disappeared one day taking lots of peoples work with them and in some cases the only pics they had of stuff.

So just make sure you have it all backed up elsewhere or do a save of the scomplete webpage/blog to your PC.

I know it sounds obvious but you;d be amazed how many people just place blind trust in some company 'cos they are on the internet' etc.

[Digz]

thanks guys.

@tophouse - im looking for something other than facebook, something a bit more professional. I appreciate the input though

@Astro_Baby - I hear what your saying!!! Im paranoid about losing work so everything I do is backed up. At the moment my blog is typed up in Pages with the images inserted. This is the way I plan to continue my blog then I can just copy and paste pages as and when. Thanks for your input

[PhoenixRising]

Use a wordpress blog, very customizable.

[callump]

Lots of astronomers on blogspot - part of google, which you might see as a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.

Here's mine: http://realastronomy.blogspot.com/

/callump

[Bizibilder]

I've been using Google's "Blogger" for around a year now - seems to work well and I have no problems posting pictures etc - See the "M'blog in the sig" to get an idea. Its also free!!

[niknak]

I would agree with Callump and Bizibilder.

Blogger / blogspot would be my suggestion.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

I am using Wordpress for quite some time now.

My gf is running a medical (MS) newssite with it and I run my site with it as well.

It's indeed highly customisable with lots of plugins available.

[jgs001]

I'm using blogspot for mine... Link in my sig.

[Euan]

Use a wordpress blog, very customizable.

My blog is Wordpress as well, it's really good

There are more themes than there used to be, it's not very customisable, but very easy to use and set up

[Digz]

thanks for the input guys. Ill look into the suggestions made - watch this space as a blog may soon appear

[Euan]

If your on Facebook there is a nice app for Wordpress that automatically posts up your new blog posts

Your WordPress Is In MyFacebook — Blog — WordPress.com

[iamjulian]

Worth considering flickr, I know a lot of astro photographers use that.

[Digz]

Worth considering flickr, I know a lot of astro photographers use that.

unless im missing something flickr is image sharing and Im after a blog site

[yesyes]

Another vote for Wordpress. I'm using it for my blog (see signature) but I'm sure there are lots of other options.

With Wordpress you have 2 options. On wordpress.com you can get a free blog hosted by Wordpress themselves. On the other hand, on wordpress.org you can download wordpress free and install on your own web hosting package, if you have one.

I haven't figured out an easy way to upload picture galleries on Wordpress though. I'm using Google's Picasa for that and link to the pictures and albums in my Wordpress blog.

It would be lovely to have astro specific blog software with features like an observing calendar that automatically generates a list of observed objects linked to galleries of said objects, if available... Any web developers who can take up the challenge? ;-)

[Ogri]

Must admit I'm not a fan of blogs, they have extreme problems coping with even relatively light traffic.

I am not a fan of Facebook either (the security of blogs and Facebook are both lacking), and won't go near it with a bargepole.

Why not just set up a straightforward website, and you can embed the photo's as thumbnails (hosted say with photobucket to save your bandwidth), you can even embed an extremely cut down forum (even the worst of which are far more capable than any blog), or a blog itself for that matter?

The only way I have seen blogs actually function, is to have one with comments absolutely forbidden, and any comments to take place on a linked forum.

That gets around all manner of potential grief.

eta: in a lot of ways, blogs can be considered as very substandard 'chatrooms'. If you host a forum on a website (it only has to have one section to chat in if you want), you can even host a 'genuine' live chatroom.

It offers so much more versatility (including personal messaging), I really don't see why people even bother with blogs at all.

PS look up SMF and SMF plug ins.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Must admit I'm not a fan of blogs, they have extreme problems coping with even relatively light traffic.

I am not a fan of Facebook either (the security of blogs and Facebook are both lacking), and won't go near it with a bargepole.

Why not just set up a straightforward website, and you can embed the photo's as thumbnails (hosted say with photobucket to save your bandwidth), you can even embed an extremely cut down forum (even the worst of which are far more capable than any blog), or a blog itself for that matter?

The only way I have seen blogs actually function, is to have one with comments absolutely forbidden, and any comments to take place on a linked forum.

That gets around all manner of potential grief.

eta: in a lot of ways, blogs can be considered as very substandard 'chatrooms'. If you host a forum on a website (it only has to have one section to chat in if you want), you can even host a 'genuine' live chatroom.

It offers so much more versatility (including personal messaging), I really don't see why people even bother with blogs at all.

PS look up SMF and SMF plug ins.

Ehmm... the new version of Wordpress is a lot better in handling traffic.

Especially the back-end is considerably faster with the new version.

Comments you can set to moderation setting. Plus you got a lot of very good anti-spam plugins that filter out unwanted comments and put them under spam in the back-end, so you can easily and quickly delete spam comments, without any of your visitors ever seeing any of them on the front-end.

[iamjulian]

unless im missing something flickr is image sharing and Im after a blog site

It is a photo blogging site (plog!?), but allows plenty of text next to each image, so there is nothing stopping you using it exactly like a blog. You cannot customise the layout much but it depends what is important to you.