Free Hosting for Your Blog

Confused what makes a blog a blog and not just another website? Well, the name comes from "Web Log" and they're basically an online, interactive journal, diary or a place to store articles about your interests and opinions. They're a great way to share your thoughts, opinions and often even photos with friends, family or if you promote if a bit.. with the entire blogging community!

Blogs do tend to have a few key features in common. Usually they provide a very easy to use interface to edit, update and add to your blog, rss feeds (to let visitors subscribe and easily keep up to date with your changes and updates), and of course comments to allow your visitors to share opinions and express their own ideas.

Basically it boils down to this: blogs are a way to share ideas and get conversational feedback, and they don't take a lot of knowledge about web coding. They are simple, fast, easy and a lot of fun! So what are you waiting for? Get blogging =)

WordPress
Wordpress has pretty much become the standard for bloggers. It's available as either an ad-supported host running the popular blogging platform or as a download so that you can host your blog on your own domain. I use this one for my personal blog and have found it to be super easy to use with lots of great plug-ins and themes, many of which are also totally free.

Blogger
Google's very own free blog hosting service. They will host your blog for you for free (your address will look like you.blogspot.com) or or if you want you can use their service to publish your blog to any host you choose! Very simple sign up and ultra easy to use, create your account, name your blog and choose a template... done and ready to go. A few nice features are comment moderation, the ability to send photos from your camera to your blog with Blogger Mobile.

Bravenet's Web Journal / Blog
These guys offer a ton of great, free services and this blog is no exception! Easy to set up and use. Customizable to match your website, great features like smilies, tagboard, rss feed so others can subscribe to your content, and of course comments so your visitors can share their thoughts and ideas about what you write. If this is your first blog, Bravenet's is a good place to start, easy to use and a friendly community.

LiveJournal
This is one of the oldest blog systems out there, and there's no sign of them slowing down. The LiveJournal can be used as a blog, private journal or a social networking system. Completely customizable and very easy to use.

Blog Drive
Another easy to set up, free blog host that offers a ton of great features! A few that stand out for me are: permalinks, built-in tag board, Multiple weblogs / journals with one account, pings and full page editing. Your url can either be http://yourname.blogdrive.com or use their service to "send your entire blog page via FTP to the website of your choice". Advertisements are added to your blog to pay for their service.