FREE hosted blogs

Free Blogging Tools

So you have decide to create your first blog on Blogger. It has a simple and fine interface that takes care of many things for you. This is my suggestion to you for your first free essential must haves for your blog.

1. Feedburner - It generates an smart feed compatible with all feed readers for free like my feed. It allows you to put easy subscribe buttons for XML, Add to yahoo, Add to Newsgator, Add to MSN etc. Read about how their single feed policy can benefit you.

It can give you a cool feed count chicklet button to show how many readers are using your feed to read your blog. It also gives you a headline animator which you can attach to your blog to display the recent 5 posts in a nice animated fashion. You can get an authentic Creative Common license, get a browser friendly RSS feed, Splice photos and links and more…

2. Haloscan - Trackback is an essential component of blogging these days. Unfortunately Blogger does not have trackback. Haloscan provides you with a seamless way to integrate free trackback in your blog by adding a small code. You can also integrate their comments component if you like to replace the Blogger comments. Read about Haloscan or Blogger comments.

The benefits are that you can edit Haloscan comments, and open them in a pop up and keep them separate from your post (Blogger allows you to only delete comments and not edit them, also on the post page all comments will show whether you like it or not).

The main disadvantage is it will not email you these comments (like Blogger) for free and it is difficult to track where these comments were made. Another major benefit is that it allows you to send pings and trackback to other sites when you mention about them in your posts.

3. Imageshack - Dont you want to fill your blog with images without hassles of registration. Imageshack provides an excellent interface to take care of your free image hosting needs. Maybe it is this the fastest way to host an image on the web. Allows lots of image format, hotlinking, transloading from other sites. Its a good idea to register to keep track of all your images in one place. It is much convenient than the proposed Hello and Picassa options…

Update: Blogger enabled hosting of images on its own webspace making it easier to host images in your posts. But you cannot manage or edit / delete your blogger images in any way

4. Technorati - Create and add a technorati profile. It allows you to claim your blog in this huge blogosphere. It allows you to put an excellent technorati search on your blog. The best part is that whenever someone mentions or links to any page of your blog, technorati knows and a search for your blog on technorati shows exactly how many sites link to which pages of your blog and when they were added with a small description. See why you need a technorati account.

5 - Sitemeter - Just takes 5 minutes to get a free tracker which gives you realtime site traffic statistics to check the quantity and quality of your site traffic with detailed referrer and geographic data. I have checked out several other tracking sites, but this one seems the best. Although you need to keep a counter visible (as a logo, visitor counter) and the statistics can be made private too.

StatCounter gives much more detailed statistics and the counter is totally invisible and free totally till you start getting large traffic, when you need to pay. But the disadvantage is that both of these track the last 100 visitors only, while another free service Extreme Tracking tracks them all… but you statistics cannot be made private. More options I like are Google Analytics for deep traffic statistical analysis and it is hidden too.

6. Feedblitz - It quickly allows your blog visitors to subscribe by email to your new posts. They just have to enter their email. You decide which page opens after they press Subscribe. A quick confirmatory email to them and they get 1 email daily with all your new posts. You can decide if you want to send the full post or short posts with defined number of characters. Very good to keep your subscribers informed of new posts. It allows them to unsubscribe easily also. Example for our blog.

7. My Blog Log - Tracks outgoing links to let you know where your traffic is going. The free limited version data is not in much detail, yet provides a good idea. You can also add a Top 5 Our Links module to your web site. Now they have a MyBlogLog community to get some extra site traffic too.

8 AudioBlogger- Audioblogger allows free unlimited audio posts from any phone to your Blogger blog. You call the number (Currently a US phone number), record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio.

9. w.bloggar - It is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer. It enables users to have only one interface to several accounts hosted on several different sites, using different publishing systems. Helps to manage multiple blogs on Blogger very effectively.

10 Blogger Mobile - opens a new concept of Moblogging i.e. blogging by your mobile phone. When you send text or photos from your mobile device to go@blogger.com they’re automatically posted to your new blog page.

11. Blogexplosion - helps you get confirmed traffic to your blog. The principle is simple, you visit other peoples blogs and they visit yours. For every 2 blogs you visit, one visitor comes to you. This is very good if you are new blogger and have hardly any traffic. Definitely try the Rent a Blog advertising swap service.

12. Pingoat - Pinging lets dozens of blogging services know you’ve updated your site and increases traffic to your blog. Just enter your blog name and blog home page, check the blogging services you want to ping, just click ‘Submit Pings’ and in one click it pings all of them. Pingoat offers a wide variety of such services and is fast too. See many more one click pinging services.

13. Creative Commons - It offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. They have built upon the “all rights reserved” of traditional copyright to create a voluntary “some rights reserved” copyright. They are nonprofit and all tools are free and useful to highlight the way in which you want others to use you content.

14. Google Adsense and Search - When you take all effort to write for a blog, why not optimize it to make some money. Let users search for good posts in your blog. And now it even helps to monetize you feeds.

So it seems all we ever speak about is Wordpress, but don’t forget that you have options when choosing a blog platform. Here are 40 free ways to get started.

Danga Software Powered

Livejournal

GreatestJournal.com - Based on the same software as LiveJournal, offers free voice posts, 1GB of photo hosting, and space for up to 2,000 user icons.

InsaneJournal.com - Another site based on the Danga software that runs LiveJournal, offers free and paid accounts, paid benefits are only enhancements.

JorunalFen.net - Runs on the Danga platform, very much directed towards various “fandoms” (i.e. Harry Potter, various Television shows) and is meant for users 18 and older.

LiveJournal.com - One of the most well known of the blogging hosts. Offers multiple account types such as ad-supported and paid. The center of a few controversies recently.

Themed Blog Sites

Blogabond

Blogabond.com - A site dedicated to travel blogs with map integration and more.

BlogCheese.com - A video blogging website.

BusyThumbs.com - A blog site specifically for your text messages and camera phone images.

Freevlog - Designed for video blogging and completely free.

Trippert.com - Create and share blogs of your travels.

Ufem.com - Blogging site specifically geared towards women. Offers multiple themes and plugins.

Word Count Journal.com - A new blogging format that is also part challenge. Write one word on the first day, two words on the second day and so on, at the end of the year you’ll have written 66,795 words.

Xanco.com - Another moblogging site for you to share all your mobile communications with friends and family.

WordPress Powered

WordPress

Blogetery.com - Offers multiple templates, anti-spam, free sub-domain and more.

BlogRox.com - Runs on WordPress and offers 50MB of free online space.

Blogsome.com - Based out of Ireland, this site uses the WordPress MU platform, large choice of themes.

Edublogs.com - WordPress powered blogging for educators.

WordPress.com - Not only can you install WordPress on your own sites, you can use the same software on their site and save yourself all of the technical work.

Various Platforms

Blogger

Blog.com - Offers free blog hosting with unlimited bandwidth for their free package, more benefits for paid members.

Blog Ladder.com - All blog entries show up on the main ladder as well as inside your own blog.

Blogger.com - A great starting site to get a taste of blogging, very easy to use.

Blogr.com - Allows you to blog, host photos & videos, and podcasts.

BlogSpirit.com - European based blogging site, offers 30-day trial and subscription thereafter, but offers quite a bit of storage.

Blogster.com - Offers free image hosting in addition to free blogs.

BlogYx.com - Blogging site with extras such as chat boxes so you can interact with your readers.

Bloki.com - Lets you build a blog site and even open it up for collaboration.

Bravenet.com - Free blog hosting with RSS feeds and more.

ClearBlogs.com - Free blog hosting and offers templates, friends only posts, IP-Banning and more.

Etribes.com - Based in Europe, allows you to create all sorts of websites including a blog.

Multiply.com - Mixes blogging and social networking, with photo galleries and more.

Netcipia.com - Free blog and wiki for private or public display with 2GB of storage.

Open Diary.com - Offers unlimited storage and posts, low cost subscription rates for advanced features.

ShoutPost.com - A platform for creating blogs with a focus on generating traffic.

SoulCast.com - Have something you want to talk about, but want to say it anonymously? This may be the blogging site for you.

Squarespace.com - Lets you build your blog with numerous themes, also allows you to add other site features.

Terapad.com - Offers blogs as well as features such as an integrated store.

Tooum.com - Fully integrated blog and forum which allows for seamless discussion between the two.

Tumblr.com - A blog platform with a focus on allowing media-rich posts.

Weebly.com - Allows you to create a site and blog, free hosting and change designs on the fly.

Windows Live Spaces - Free blogging with your MSN account, only drawback is readers have to have an account also.

Vox.com - Part of the SixApart family of blogging sites, very much geared towards the personal journal types of blogs.

Xanga.com - Part social network, part blogging, all free.

Yahoo 360 - Part of your Yahoo account and features easy publishing.

Zoomshare.com - Free blog hosting with 250MB of free storage.