Blog site suggestions - which one to use?!

[Friction]

Hi all,

I'm off on Holiday to Japan shortly and am looking to set up a little blog to post pics and tales of my adventures for people back home, and figure that a blog would be a nice way to do this - BUT I have never had a blog before and don't really know where to start!

Ideally it would be something simple that I can edit and post pics to quickly on the fly - I don't know anything about HTML coding etc. I've had a quick look at sites like Blogspot or Tumblr and they seem like they would be ideal, but wondered if anyone had any suggestions!

I really just want nice simple posts of details of what I've been up to, and ideally with picture slide shows, so I can show several pictures in the space of one (if that makes sense) and also I'd maybe like a separate page within the blog for food related posts. Thinking about it I'd like maybe more than two different pages so I can group things together nicely, almost like a blog within a blog I guess!

Any help, advice, tips etc will be most welcome!

[toythatkills]

www.wordpress.com is the best blog-site ever. And it allows you the freedom to expand it if you ever want to because it's really powerful.

Also has an iPhone app so you can take a photo and have it on your blog in seconds if you want to

[EvilBoris]

Yeah definately wordpress!

[prinnysquad]

Make sure you go to temples and game shops. I'd love to read aboout those.

I feel like I should do a blog. It would be full of bollocks no-one is interested in, and packed with bile and vitriol about the **** that happens.

And no-one in their right mind would read it. Not even me.

[Friction]

Thanks chaps - you can tell I did LOTS of research into this as I'd not heard of it I shall go and investigate right now!

Like the sound of the phone app too, very clever!

[Friction]

Make sure you go to temples and game shops. I'd love to read aboout those.

I feel like I should do a blog. It would be full of bollocks no-one is interested in, and packed with bile and vitriol about the **** that happens.

And no-one in their right mind would read it. Not even me.

I will do!

I've been to Japan before, but this time I'm going with my Dad - whose wanted to visit there for over 30 years! Needless to say we will be doing everything touristy as well as the other stuff. My old man has a mental camera (SLR with a few different lens choices) too, and knowing him he will take 1000's of pictures so I expect some quality photo's too!

[Dogg Thang]

When you say 'mental camera', do you just mean he has a good memory?

Man, I'd love to go to Japan. Always have. Then I put it off, got married, had kids and... *sigh* Can I come too?

[Friction]

When you say 'mental camera', do you just mean he has a good memory?

Man, I'd love to go to Japan. Always have. Then I put it off, got married, had kids and... *sigh* Can I come too?

Ahh sorry poor choice of words - I mean his actual camera - his has this monster SLR & lenses etc (I'll edit the post to reflect that!).

Escape the wife for a bit and go, you won't regret it

[Friction]

Sorry to bump this one!

Signed up to wordpress today and had a little look - seems a bit complicated and daunting! Aside from the help tutorials they have on site are there any other sites with help/tutorials to help and new blogger out?

[toythatkills]

It's really not complicated at all! If you've signed up, you've probably already got your blog. Now you just go to "add post" and type away.

Obviously it can do more, but as you start posting you learn more as and when you need it, and you'll find it's not nearly as hard as it appears

Just leave themes for now, and concentrate on getting used to posting, worry about other stuff later

[egparadigm]

TBF, I think Wordpress is perhaps the less straightforward one. Just seems to me that the user interface is a little over-cluttered.

I think Tumblr was designed to be as straightforward as possible. You'll soon get used to Wordpress, though.

[Friction]

Thanks guys!

The first thing I did was to mess around with the themes because I thought the first thing would be to sort the layout! I already wish I had the default one back - if only I knew how...

Perhaps I should indeed give Tumblr a look to see if that's more new blogger friendly!?

[toythatkills]

It probably is more new-blogger friendly, but wordpress is much more powerful, and it's easy to use, just slightly harder to use at the beginning.

With wordpress you could do things like move your entire blog over to your own hosting in the future, if you ever wanted to. With tumblr you're stuck with tumblr, AFAIK. It's worth the small amount of extra effort, you won't regret it in the end

[Friction]

A fair point there TTK! I didn't think long term with it. I'm setting this up purely for the trip, but I did always want my own blog at some point. Thing is though like I say, I changed the theme and can't find anything simple that looks nice now Can't find an option to reset the theme either!

[toythatkills]

If you go to the A-Z and find "Kubrick," I think that's the default one. It's a nice clean simple one anyway