Running your own blog software vs. using a service (like blogger, typepad, etc)

Readers don’t really care if you are part of a “larger website” or just hosted on your own. What they care about is your content! I mean if they find your blog ??
Of course, setting up a blogging tool (e.g. WP) on your own domain it gives you much more flexibility in customization than any “free” solution.

I’d def go with your own domain. Using WordPress is great for beginners and low level users. But you are bot able to get the full functionality of the software using ‘wp.com’. Blogspot was nice at fist, until I signed up for it!! lol. It’s horrible. You have very few themes to choose from unless you want to purchess an account, and why do that when you could pay the same price for a domain/hosting?
WordPress on your own domain is your best idea.

If you want to gain traffic by using other free sites then you could create an account on blogspot and set up your blog to forward to your new domain. That way you could use ‘tags’ on blogspot that would help BS users find you and redirect to your site. That make since?

i love wp i used blogger,mt but i am not satisfied

i recommend my clients too

One of my main concerns is that users will have to register in order to post a comment, instead of just being able to log in.

You can change your WP settings to NOT send the comments to the moderation que.

No, users don’t have to register – unless YOU make it a requirement.

Yep, moshu, I already installed my wordpress, and tinkered around with it a little. I left the option there for now… Last time I ran a message board where you didn’t have to register to post, I got inundated with spam.

It’s impossible to stop all the spam. It’s like flies around a dead carcus. Wish they’d tighen up those spam laws.

Having the register requirement will NOT help you with spam. 99.99% of spam is not from humans but scripts. INstall the anti-spam plugins.

What moshu said. That Akismet (and the Bad Behavior) are awesome.

I’d also like to throw in that, when you go with a service, you run the risk of having you rblog go down more often. I remember when I first started out with blogger.com (eons ago), my site was down probably 50% of the time, because the server was always down (all of the bloggers signing on at the same time to post – the server crashed all the time).

Since I’ve used my own host space, I’ve had less downtime. Where I’d lose access to my blog with blogger at least once a week, I think I’ve had my own server (my host’s, anyway) go down maybe twice in the last 5 years.

I just wanted to say thanks for all the responces.