
Ask HN: what hosted blogging solution would you recomend? - csmeder
I'm thinking of using http://blogger.com or http://posterous.com/ what else is out there? What would you recommend?<p>I'm looking for a hosted solution with basic functionality.
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samstokes
I faced the same question a few days ago. I went for Tumblr in the end, mostly
because of the polished feel both of the website and of individual Tumblr
blogs, the low barrier to entry, and theme customisability. I've quite liked
how little I've had to change to get a basic blog working how I want it
(decent look and feel, Twitter feed integrated, etc).

Only nasty surprise since has been that the Tumblr founders "don't believe in
comments", so there's no built-in commenting support (instead of commenting,
you're supposed to sign up for your own Tumblr account and use their "reblog"
feature, which isn't a decision I want to force on any readers I may attract).
They do have some integration with Disqus, which I was sort of planning to use
anyway, although apparently this doesn't work so well in themes other than the
default "Redux". I have had a couple of problems with comments not showing up,
but I think it's probably a problem with Disqus rather than with Tumblr.

I found a couple of Mashable articles comparing Posterous and Tumblr:

<http://mashable.com/2009/06/29/posterous-vs-tumblr/>

<http://mashable.com/2009/09/28/tumblr-vs-posterous/>

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diN0bot
the not-native comments for tumblr surprised me, too. i don't like the disqus
solution, though i think anonymous comments are still possible.

i don't like the design of tumblr themes, but that's obviously personal. i
guess i'm more of a word-blogger, and thus my attachment to wordpress.

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unalone
Why bother with comments? All they do is add noise. I like Tumblr's approach
with their Likes and Reblogs: It adds a trackable story to each of your posts.

I'm a Tumblr theme designer. Would it be whoring to point you to one of my
creations? I made this one specifically for people who want to write in
longform; I've seen it used on a few hundred blogs now and it does a very nice
job.

<http://www.tumblr.com/theme/3164>

Alternatively, if you want a very minimal solution, here's a stripped-down one
I made, though it's got a quirk or two I ought to get around to fixing.

<http://www.tumblr.com/theme/230>

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trimski
Tumblr has post-by-email and customizable themes. <http://www.tumblr.com/why-
tumblr>

Soup.io is another tumblelog platform that makes it dead simple to reblog
(literally one click). <http://soup.io>

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unalone
Tumblr is the most polished blogging platform out there. It also has built-in
audience controls, meaning if you write good things, news will spread.

Posterous has an excellent feature set, but it's uglier than balls. Bad
typography, bad colors, generally washed-out. If you're okay with not looking
beautiful, though, it might be a better from-the-get-go choice than Tumblr.
I've tried and given up on it myself.

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AndrewDucker
I use Livejournal myself. Works fantastically well, best commenting system out
there, support RSS, Atom and OpenID. Has a well-featured API, so you can use
any number of clients to write posts.

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qhoxie
For well-polished basics, I don't think you can do any better than posterous.

~~~
csmeder
I just created a posterous account.

Is it possible to add photos to a post after its been posted? I can see it
gives you text editing, but no way of uploading photos?

Do you get to decide where the photos fall in-line with the text?

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flooha
I don't know if you can do that with posterous or not, but I know WordPress is
used for a lot of sites whose content relies heavily on images.
peopleofwalmart.com would be a example.

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pwmanagerdied
It's also coded like shit and has security issues constantly. Anyone who uses
wordpress on a site a hacker's spider might find is asking for trouble.

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diN0bot
<http://wordpress.com>

it just works. for everything.

i've tried posterous and returned to wordpress.

edit: i've used wordpress both as a tech-dumb, just-want-to-blog-fast user, as
well as set up and customized on my own server. curious what problems others
have found with wordpress.

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aw3c2
security, bloat, ugly code, annoyingly frequent updates.

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slig
He pointed out to the hosted version of wordpress (.com)

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flooha
Blogger, WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr, Weebly, TypePad, etc... are all
good choices, each with their own pluses and minuses. If you get to the point
where you want more flexibility, and customization with your choice of
plugins, please give Flooha a try, it's free. <http://flooha.com> You can
upgrade later to a traditional web hosting account with control panel, ssh,
email, backups, cron jobs, forwarders, statistics, file manager, and more if
you like the service.

If you have questions, look me up on Google Talk as "flooha", or email me at
matt [at] flooha [dot] com.

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maxklein
Posterous sucks because you cannot insert images where you want and you have
to go through a separate interface to get your images in it. Posted one
article on posterous, and don't want to post more.

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sachinag
If you use your e-mail program as your post editor (I use Gmail web
interface), you can make it work by throwing ((nogallery)) into your title.
See my recent posts for how it works: <http://www.sachinagarwal.com/>

Disclosure: I'm not the Sachin Agarwal that co-founded Posterous, although
he's threatened to hijack my domain and redirect it to his blog. (He's
kidding. Sort of. I will stab him if he does.) Because of my name, however, I
get random support e-mails and have gotten pretty decent at tech support.
Also, the Help section is actually rather well documented if you know what
you're looking for.

~~~
csmeder
what if you didn't put the images in ahead of time? Can you add them when you
go to edit the post?

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jhancock
I wanted an easy to admin wordpress site and picked dreamhost.com as its just
about as turn-key as I needed. Backups, upgrades all work seamlessly. This
gave me the added benefit that for a fixed price per year, I can host other
people's wordpress sites on the same plan. Turns out I have several friends
that want a site but know nothing about running one, so I do it for them.

For a wp theme that looks good and has flexibility and support, I picked
<http://diythemes.com/thesis/>

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DanielBMarkham
If you're looking for ease-of-use, posterous or Blogger. I'd probably go with
Blogger, but there's nothing wrong with posterous either.

If you're looking to eventually do "cooler" stuff with blogging, go with
WordPress or MoveableType. I've been with MT for almost five years. If I had
to do it over again, I'd probably stay, but WordPress is looking awful good as
well.

But for now? Just kicking around? Make it as easy as possible on yourself.

~~~
gridspy
I'm using movable type because it renders to static pages, so it will scale
better.

My blog and static product description pages use it
<http://www.gridspy.co.nz/> <http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/>

It is easy to use and a nice fast loading time (pre-rendered html) for
visitors.

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abi
I'm writing a new blogging platform that is _definitely_ much simpler than
Blogger, Posterous or Tumblr. I'm hoping to get my first iteration out by the
end of the week (yay for Thanksgiving break!) and will post it on Hacker News.
But I couldn't find an email on your account so feel free to email me - abii
@st anford.edu

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diN0bot
what's your differentiator? how do you get any simpler than posterous and
tumblr without becoming twitter?

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ericd
I've heard great things about squarespace (<http://www.squarespace.com>),
though I haven't used it myself.

They seem to have import/export functionality to all the other big blog
platforms, so it wouldn't be hard to jump out to another platform if you
wanted to.

It's not free, though (starting at $8/mo).

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adamcrowe
All of them. Register for a posterous account and you can autopost to other
blogs/twitter/facebook/flickr/etc.

Why be limited?

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diN0bot
when would that be useful? people usually have a single blog rather than
duplicates at different domains...otherwise your users and comments are
fragmented.

furthermore, the features are in the interfaces for writing and reading posts.
you might as well choose a platform that allows you to write posts with all
the image floating and code snippets you want. or whatever.

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vaksel
I went with tumbler for mine, the only thing I don't like is how it links to
the actual post. Instead of linking the post title, like every single other
blog on the planet, you have to scroll all the way down and click the "Posted
4 days ago" link

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omarchowdhury
<http://www.typepad.com>

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karanbhangui
I love posterous.

