Indie 2.0

If you’re thinking of starting a blog, I recommend WordPress.com. My brother (who’s thinking of starting a blog) and my friend (whose been blogging since 2004 on blogger.com and feeling some of its limitations) may find this useful:

1. Zoli, a Web 2.0 pundit whose opinion I respect a lot, recently migrated to WordPress:

Lesson #1: It pays to go with the market leader, especially if it’s open source. WordPress has a thriving ecosystem, with countless themes, widgets, plugins, while Blogware has none. Zero. Only those provided by Tucows, where time seems to have stopped….

2. Helen (of “I forgot where I was going with this” blog) wrote a convincing review of it, and uses it for her own blog:

WordPress is the Mercedes of the blog platforms. Smooth driving, good looking, and runs well. It was very easy for me to set up my new blog. The UI makes it really easy to navigate your way around. It has, by far, the best blog and feed stat counter that I’ve seen. It organizes them quite nicely showing you exactly how many views were from each incoming URL and how many views for each post. read more… (1/3 way down this page)…

3. Mo’ better features (see comparison chart from USC’s Online Journalism Review)

4. Better than Google’s blogger (the other large free hosted blog software). Just google blogger vs wordpress and check out some samples.

5. Progressive geeky open source technology. Up-and-coming. E.g., developers can develop widgets for it, the best of which are offered through WordPress.com. (Why is open source better? Check out the manifesto by Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.)

6. WordPress.com is free and easier than installing WordPress myself. (WordPress.com is the hosted version of the free server software WordPress, from wordpress.org). But I don’t need that extra firepower:

• I can still get my own domain from WordPress.com ($15/year)
• Using WordPress.com’s templates, I can customize enough for my desired look and functions (and pay small upgrade fee to tweek the CSSs, if I want)
• I don’t want/need to run ads–yet (Google AdSense–directed marketing google ads on the side of my blog, and I get paid a very small amount for this). WordPress.com says they’ll have this option, for a fee, in the future.

If you have a popular blog with lots of traffic and do want to host, here’s the 2 WordPress hosting services I recommend:

• MediaTemple: they’re gods. What’s good enough for Jeffrey Zeldman is good enough for me…

7. Excellent widgets

8. Ability to do true tag cloud

9. Very good stats

10. Very thoughtful, smooth and nice UX (user experience)

(more on the last four–screenshots and commentary–soon…)