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So you want to be a blogger and it’s time to choose a blog host. But who? You could go with what all your friends are going with, but what if you’re the first one to start a blog? Or what if you’re not sure you want what they have?

You’ll want to do your own research, but in this section of this series, I am going to explore the basics of the big three – Blogger, Wordpress, and LiveJournal – to help you make your decision.

I first started blogging with Wordpress when I started working for 451press. It was a bit intimidating to switch over to a new service, but I found the transition easy and positive.

One thing that is great about Wordpress is the easy to manage categories. If you’re typing away and see your post doesn’t fit in any of your current categories, then it’s as easy as typing in a new category and adding it to the list - all of which can be done without having to save the post or refresh the page. Categories are a wonderful thing for both you and your readers. If you’re looking for an older post or your readers want to read a specific category only, it’s as easy as clicking on that category name. Plus it’s easy to just go to a page and delete, rename, and otherwise manage your categories.

What sets Wordpress apart from some blogging hosts is that you can have pages, which is one of the things that put me off from using Blogger. Not only do you have your main blog, but you can have an about you page, a page for your business or online shopping, another page for your writing… The list goes on forever. The ability to create and manage pages makes your blog more like a website and less like just another blog.

However, there are its catches. There are a lot of options and things you can do with your blog, but it does take a while to get used to the navigation and exactly how things work. What I found to be the most frustrating is putting in separate categories for the blogroll. While mine looks like it should, it took me a long time to figure out how to make it that way, and I’m still not sure if I did it the way I’m supposed to.

I mentioned the templates as a positive feature above, but you should know that not all templates are created equal. Not all have color options, and not all have customizable header options. This isn’t the most horrible thing in the world by any means, but you might end up finding a template you love but not being able to customize your header.

What about going directly into the template code and doing it there? That brings on my final criticism of Wordpress.

One of my largest annoyances when it comes to Wordpress is that you have to pay to get access to your template. There is no easy tab to click on to edit the code. Yes, there is a space for you to move around your sidebar widgets, but that’s all the designing input you get when it comes to your template unless you pay the fee.