Hi, A friend of mine wants to start some blogging and we're wondering what the best site is to go with, e.g. myspace, xanga, vox, livejournal, yahoo360, etc. I've got no experience...

Here the context:

She'll go abroad to do some voluntary charity work and wants to keep supporters up-to date with text posts, images and occasionally perhaps a video. She also wants to use it as a first contact for any new supporters she hasn't yet meat (and might never) meet face to face.

- Content should be visible to non-members

- Commenting on entries and photos (is there any site that doesn't require membership to comment?)

- Any site that'd make it easy to collect donations for a specific project?

- Should be simple to add text, photos etc. as she's not a very technical person, so in any case, it (but I can help with initial setup).


Thanks for any opinions.

Any of those might work, but it sounds like she's going for something a bit more professional than your usual Xanga or Myspace or even Livejournal, so I'm going to suggest Wordpress.

I've personally never used it, but I've heard bits about it. It seems pretty easy to use and I believe it can be integrated into your own site (if you have one), rather than just having a blog at wordpress.com/yourname. There are also a lot of premade themes (that look much better than Xanga themes *cough*) to make your site look pretty without going through the hassle of learning how to code.

Again, I'm no expert on it, so you might want to wait for some other people's opinions and look into it yourself before deciding. I think Melissa (----) knows a lot about Wordpress.

Zephyr made a good recommendation with WordPress, but if your friend wants a simpler blogging method, I'd go with Blogger. It's really easy to use, nothing too fancy or complicated. I don't code Blogger layouts, but as for using Blogger, I can probably help you two if you have any questions.

I personally think that Wordpress would be your best option. It's extremely easy to manage and you can tweak a lot of settings. You have the option of private posts, opening and closing commenting, making posts visible to the public or only to subscribers, and video blogging as well, so I think it covers most of your requirements.

Once you get the hang of it, it's also easy to customize. There's a lot of pre-made layouts and if you know php, you can create your own layout.

As for collecting donations - you can put a simple paypal donation button in a sidebar or your posts, or you can easily add forms to your posts with plug-ins.

It's REALLY easy and a lot of fun.

Sounds like I'm going to check out Wordpress.com. Thanks.

I have livejournal and ive used it for a while now
ive tried xanga but i decided to go back to using livejournal and i really like it.

its simple and when you want to change your theme its way less complicated then xanga was.