Free Website or Blogging Site

Surely there is a thread about this somewhere on permies, but I can't find it. What are people using for website or blogging software? I've tinkered with many of them in the past: WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot, Google Sites, a bunch that went belly up long ago. These that I listed might not even be going concerns anymore. If there's a real thread about this somewhere, feel free to point me in the right direction.

I don't know where to direct you for the latest and hottest blog platforms. But I'm presently using blogspot, and so do several other people in my area. People around me also use Wordpress. So both of these still exist. Blogspot is easy for a non-techy novice to set up. It has to be, as proof......I'm using it.

Wordpress is the dominate blogging service if you want full control over your site and have a standalone site. But you might also check out https://medium.com or https://steemit.com if you are less worried about having your own standalone site.

I strongly favor wordpress. It may be overpowered for some people but I really appreciate the high amount of customization that is available. That, and it feels like they almost always have more than one possible solution to a given problem. I'm also a big fan of that.

And as I hit 'enter' I realize you said free...

Which brings me to say I prefer the paid version of wordpress and thus my previous post is not quite as helpful to potential readers as I had hoped.

Sorry.

Is Weebly considered just too simplistic? For  those of us basically no website building skills it seems like a good option

It depends on what you all want to do with your site. It might be just fine, but it might also be unable to do all the things you want to do.

Also curious if anyone knows a resource where to find paid assistance with some of these specific different types of sites? When I Google this you just get Weebly sponsored stuff I am looking for independent sources of help. Also I am not sure how to go about being able to check the credentials of such individuals.I understand you can get a reference to see sites they have developed, but it is still difficult to know how much that actually cost and what was given to the website developer given to begin with. I understand I am asking questions that are relatively unsolvable, but just needed to state the obvious I suppose It is unreasonable to ask for phone numbers for references?


There is also the issue of censorship or whatever you choose to call it. I know a person that seemingly had their site taken off Wordpress without notice or explanation, the topic was 9/11. And while permaculture does not seem to be yet under threat from this censorship, those who may be headed in the direction of kind of a more general outline of topics to serve your local community, you might want to take this issue into consideration I know the person who lost their site had a free Wordpress site and felt it could have been avoided with a paid site


I suppose I will add that if communities had effective on line services and goods for hire and trade on some on line platform it would make this problem much easier

I'm planning on writing my own(very Simple layout) in HTML(then buying domain and hosting separately) so that I have full control and won't lose functionality if paywalls, code errors, or censorship issues arise, or if the company goes belly-up.

I want to learn how to do these things for myself, so that's part of the appeal; but it's a lot more work than most want to do.

Squarespace was the best paid option, in terms of features, when I was researching designing a blog/marketing campaign for a friend(he never went through with it though, so I didn't work in it itself).

Dustin Thank you Yes Square Space seems really good especially since it allows one to post audio files. and for those of us interested in using these platforms as a kind of community trading post of ideas, controversies, goods and services etc, then being able to present recorded conversations of interested parties is clearly a powerful tool