

Ask HN: Building a blog - brandonpindulic

I’m looking to take my existing blog (brandonpindulic.wordpress.com) which sucks, to say the least, and ramp it up with higher quality posts and some guest posts by individuals who I respect. Is it worth it to buy a Wordpress blog for $100&#x2F;year? Or should I stick with the free blog&#x2F;look for a Wordpress alternative?
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buugs
Depending on how you want your blog to work (say you want to serve ads, or
some other feature) you'll get stuck unable to do what you want with
wordpress.com. [1]

Self hosting WordPress is usually a good option but if money is a problem it
will mean more work managing your install, if money isn't much of a problem
take a look at the many managed hosts (wpengine, wpsynthesis, zippykid).

You also get more options with theming and plugins if you host WordPress
yourself.

If you just want to blog, a free wordpress.com, a blogger blog, or a tumblr
should all serve you well enough.

You might want to invest in your own domain name though, as *.example.com
isn't the best way to bring people in.

[1]:
[http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/](http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/)

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era86
I feel like I plug this all the time, but what the heck...

I played with Ghost ([https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)) a couple of
weeks ago and loved it. It's less about content management and more about
content publishing. The editor is wonderful!

Wordpress seems bloated for blogs nowadays, but to each his or her own.

~~~
stevekemp
The appeal of Wordpress will always be the massive collection of themes,
plugins, and guides for non-technical users.

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stevekemp
It seems like you've identified the _writing_ as the thing you wish to
improve, both that of your own, and that from guests.

On that basis changing the software seems unrelated.

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t0
[http://ghost.org](http://ghost.org) looks promising. You should definitely be
self hosting.

~~~
jackweirdy
Installed ghost earlier this week. It's awesome. The only problem I've had so
far is that this bug
[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/527](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/527)
means I can't run it at [https://mysite/blog](https://mysite/blog) \- but
other than that it's _awesome_

~~~
jitendrac
Ghost is still under beta. It is growing gradually and many features like
plugins and comment systems are being planned. For now you can create a new
Ghost blog on some hosting and create a new subdomain so
[http://blog.mysite/](http://blog.mysite/) will work...

