More questions about blogs...

[eragon]

I'd like some feedback regarding your personal preferences for blogging services and software.

I've had a brief experience with G's Blogger, but honestly, I found it a bit limiting. Perhaps I didn't try hard enough to learn more about it, but my frustration with it led me to just branch out and create my own web site. And the only reason I'm even considering using a blog is to post articles of interest and thoughts all related to the site I'm developing. I'll incorporate these articles of interest in some fashion on my site, but it will be more indepth.

Now on with my questions:

1. Is TypePad any good?
2. I've read in another recent here that some users like WordPress. Anyone else? I take it that it's like w.bloggar, an interface installed on my computer that manipulates an existing blog on my server. Is that right?
3. If I use something like Movable Type (something I know I have to install on my web server), is it silly for me to have my blog on the same server as my site? If memory serves, I believe before blogs were all the rage, I know that's the way it was, but in relation to linking from my blog to my site, is that going to look funny to the spiders?
4. Any other tools and services are welcome.

[seobook]

>Is TypePad any good?

it has a few more features than blogger...such as categories.

>I've read in another recent here that some users like WordPress. Anyone else? I take it that it's like w.bloggar, an interface installed on my computer that manipulates an existing blog on my server. Is that right?

I have not tried wordpress. I believe it and bblog.com have both been getting good reviews by lots of people. both are free I believe.

>If I use something like Movable Type (something I know I have to install on my web server), is it silly for me to have my blog on the same server as my site? If memory serves, I believe before blogs were all the rage, I know that's the way it was, but in relation to linking from my blog to my site, is that going to look funny to the spiders?

some sites are only blogs. the search engines do not usually know where the blog software is, jsut the pages it creates. many sites have blogs on them (SearchEngineWatch does).

some put the blog as a subdomain and some make it just another filepath in their directory structure.

depending on how hard you want to work on your blog and what your goals are with it you may want to make it a subdomain or its own domain.

blog pages are web pages just like other web pages. it does not much matter to search engines where the blog software or blog output is so long as they can find the output files.

<added> movable type and typepad are made by the same people...movable type goes on your server and the typepad engine is remotely hosted.

[eragon]

Thanks seobook!

[sugarrae]

My preference is MT - if you go with it, be sure to install the blacklist plugin. Also, Expression Engine is another option, although not free, it is probably one of the best out there. Virtually impossible to spam an Expression Engine Blog due to their Captcha Image feature.

[Sebastien Billard]

You may want to check Dotclear, a very nice blogging php software. It is xhtm, accessible, free and very well supported : http://www.dotclear.net/en/

[eragon]

Great feedback! Thanks everyone.