There are lots of inexpensive tools on the Interwebs that are really useful. I like finding them.

Honestly, I didn’t put a lot of thought into which hosted blogging service to choose.  I just knew it had to be two things: free (I know what that means) and good (not exactly sure what that means).  In the quick research I did, I found:

Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Yahoo 360, LiveJournal.com, a dumb ‘ol AOL service, and a dumb ‘ol Microsoft service.  The rest I’d never really heard of, and I figured one of these would do the trick.

I’ve played around with Blogger in the past when I helped design the Fox Net Impact Blog for school.  It worked well, but I always felt like it was going to freeze or stop working when I was editing the layout of my page.  It was especially frustrating when trying to add “Gadgets” – the little boxes of information to the right and/or left of the main blog content that holds links, external calendars, etc.  The blog was eventually finished and it turned out fine, but it wasn’t quite as effortless as the service was trying to be.

So, I first found this site – a review of the ten most popular blogging sites out there.  This review favored WordPress.com over all others.  Then I read this blog post that compares WordPress vs LiveJournal vs Blogger.  The post is very helpful and detailed, and again, made a good case for WordPress.

I didn’t consider the other ones because I’m not a Yahoo fan, I think Microsoft and AOL make crappy products, and I got tired of looking.  The fact is, they all provide the same basic service, which is all I need right now.

WordPress offers me a lot of options, most of which I have yet to explore.  But from what was written in the links I have mentioned and from my initial experience with the product, I think I chose wisely.

Related posts:

My excellent adventure from WordPress.com to WordPress.org