Ask HN: what hosted blogging solution would you recomend?
I'm thinking of using http://blogger.com or http://posterous.com/ what else is out there? What would you recommend?
I'm looking for a hosted solution with basic functionality.
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:
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
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.
For well-polished basics, I don't think you can do any better than posterous.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
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).
All of them. Register for a posterous account and you can autopost to other blogs/twitter/facebook/flickr/etc.
Why be limited?
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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I love posterous.