Should I use tumblr or an real website to blog?

What kind of content are you planning to publish? (i.e. Photos, videos, text, etc) How much control do you want over how your blog looks and runs?

Depends, if you buy a website and some cheap hosting, it would only be about $8 for the domain a year and a couple bucks a monthf or the hosting. Then you could get some free open source blogging software to use.

Or you tumblr for it to be completely free.

You may want to investigate wordpress as an option.

@gggritso I want to do a text and photo blog. entries about food and places to go.

@Dog how come? is wordpress better?

Are you interested in the mechanics of running a blog? Or do you simply want to post whatever pops into your mind.

I think rackspace would require you to set up the software.

@rguest – Wordpress is easy to setup and full customizable, has many mods and features which can be added to it.

I also want everyone to know I don’t really understand how to make an entire website. I am just wondering if my blog would be taken less seriously if I used tumblr as my platform.

I use Blogger right now- but am thinking of moving to Wordpress so I can be taken more seriously.

As I look through the word press site, it seems a little overwhelming. Is it as complicated as it seems? Or is it just new to me..

I would go cheap and easy first. The content is more important than the platform, and it takes time & practice to learn to create posts interesting to other people, and to post often enough to keep people coming back.

Put the effort into content.

Since you’re not familiar with website creation, I think a good way to go it to sign up with a free blogging service and purchase a domain to go with it (e.g. rguestawesomeblog.com). This will run you about 8$ as @pjanaway said.

To do this, you could sign up either with Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger or another service.

Tumblr is super-simple to set up and run, but lacks a lot of advanced features. It does, however provide a lot of built-in themes and lets you edit the style of the website as much as your want.

Blogger also lets you do that, but I don’t like it, personally. It has its advantages though.

Wordpress is my favourite of the bunch. It’s free, and it has tons of features. It looks overwhelming at first, but you don’t need to tinker with anything to get going. Just start, and you’ll figure stuff out as you go. The downside is that you have less themes to work with, and to edit the stylesheet you need to pay extra.

@rguest – For wordpress you would need some knowledge of running a website, such as knowing how to install a script.

Allthough I have heard of places that charge to set it up, plus some webhosts have autoinstallers of the software.

What @pjanaway said is only true if you get a paid install of Wordpress. If you register on wordpress.com you don’t need to know anything about installing scripts.

I think I’m going to go with Tumblr. I can give creat my own name instead of having xxx.tumblr.com to make it seem more like an actual website. I am not and advanced enough to use wordpress. I just attempted to install it, and couldn’t even get past that step. So Tumblr it is!

You don’t need to install anything… just go to wordpress.com and register… it’s the same as tumblr. wordpress.com and wordpress.org are different.

Wordpress is easy and free.
It has a lot more options over blogger ( which I used for years.)

Also if you started on blogger you can import your blog entries into Wordpress.

thank you for all of the responses!

I am new to blogging also, so I can relate to that ;) I use Tumblr and honestly LOVE it, it’s simple, customizable and just plain brilliant!

I tried numerous different blogging sites (My own made site, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, ect..) and found that, for me, none compared to the simplicity and user friendliness of Tumblr.

Blogging only works if YOU enjoy it. With that being said, if you are unsure of what site you’d like to use then take the time to check out several ideas and alternatives.

I did this and now know, hands down, that Tumblr is for me ^.^

Good luck and Happy Blogging!!

tumblr is besttttt for you

I highly recommend using Google’s Blogger service.

I’ve found it to be the easiest to use. And once you’ve begun, you can change to your own custom domain (and you don’t have to pay for hosting either!). They have a page on it here.

Of course, you need to pay for the domain itself. That would probably be about $10 per year. And if that’s not even what you want to do, then all the better.