This blog has been put off long enough. I was hoping to solicit a few other people's opinion but it looks like it is not going to happen. The original intent was to solicit the opinion of several people in the know on bloggin software. Of course, most of my contacts are also college students and major geeks. This means most of us disappear during the school year. That is exactly what happened here.
As far as what I prefer, I prefer Movable Type. I, however, am no expert. I like my older version because it supports multiple blogs and authors. (My old free version supports up to 5 authors and 5 blogs. The free 3.1 version supports 1 author and 3 blogs.) It works simple enough and well enough to meet all my needs. It is widely supported and numerous templates are available for it. I am comfortable with it, like it and endorse it.
As far as an expert, I turned to Geek who got me hooked on bloging and held my hand via Internet relay chat while I configured and modified Movable Type. All of what is written below, minus my comments in italics, is his penmanship.
Recent changes in the two most popular blogging tools, the buyout of Blogger and the revised licensing of Movable Type, have led many to look elsewhere for blogging software, and programmers, be they professional or beginner hobbyists, have stepped up to the plate to try to make the next Movable Type. There has also been an explosion in non-traditional blog uses, and I will also cover these, from PhotoBlogs to aggregate blogs.
There are a few tools that have been looked at to fill the shoes that Six Apart, owners of Movable Type, left behind when they moved into the corporate realm of business, that being the completely free, freely supported, feature filled blog creation and maintenance application, more commonly called a CMS (content management system). These include tools like WordPress, a newer open source PHP based dynamic creation tool created out of the ashes of the open source tool b2/cafelog. Word Press is a good tool in some uses, and though I have not tried out some of the newer uses for blog apps on Word Press, I would be surprised if someone had not worked it out and/or have some template for it online. (Lumpy did a quick and dirty google search and found quite a few sites offering Word Press templates. There was on page by a McChris which offered some really nice looking ones, an interesting hodge podge from a competition and weblog tools. Lumpy notes that he did not try any of these but they looked good.) The differences between MT and WP are many.
First, WordPress is truly dynamic, so some code is difficult to include such as a page that on every publish goes to a site like Amazon for information on a product. This is ok in MT, as it would only publish once. It is bad in WP because it publishes on each reload of the page. Also, WP needs one install per blog, so it doesn't even have a valid ability to overcome one common complaint about MT's new licensing, that you are limited in blogs. Sure, it's nice to be able to have as many as you want, but most blog level hosting packages have limits on the MySQL databases you can have. MT and WP need one per install. MT only needs one install per site. WP's one saving grace is the ability to assign a password to each individual post. Each has their uses.
Another toolmaker that has caught a lot of people's eye is the variety offered by pMachine. I have seen pMachine in use before at other sites like Radioguy.net, and GeekMeltdown.com, even written in it, and I found it to be a good professional package which many businesses would find useful in the maintenance of their front end web site, but little that would interest me as a blog maintainer, though I am admittedly biased to MT. pMachine offers their normal tool, free for non commercial uses, and a newer one, called ExpressionEngine. They also have an OS X based app for posting to pMachine installation, though oddly no mention of a Windows version is made. Expression engine is highly touted by the company and it's users, but it is not cheap, the cheapest full license coming at $149.00.
These are just a few of the tools that have made strong showing post MT license revision, though Six Apart has pointed out they are not enforcing licensing at all. You can easily find some much more detailed analysisof the available options, from paid(TypePad) to free ad based hosting(Blog*Spot), and all of the options, I have just examined two of the ones I have read about a lot in the blogs I visit often. You may find one of these does the trick. You may find Movable Type does. That is one of the most excellent parts about the blog software industry; there is no lack of choices to be examined, if only you wish to dedicate the time.
Now, to the second part of my no longer little article, Photoblogging. I maintain one at GeekLens.com, and I will concede right off the top, I did not create my own template, though I have made some major edits to it. I downloaded the template for my photoblog from Blogstyles, and I find it to be a most excellent setup, and easily edited if you know a little CSS or can work out easily what part does what in the template. (Lumpy uses a seriously modified template from blogsyles as well.)Photoblogs are a great thing, though most people have custom templates that are a lot less blog like, and much more professional. The main concern with a photoblog is disk space, because unlike a normal blog, each post can take a hundred KB, and on a small scale that's fine, but posting daily for months on end can make for very bloated sites.
There are a good number of directories and sites to take advantage of photoblogging to improve yourself. Photoblogs.org is a great directory for finding people with similar interests, and there are at least a half dozen theme based photo sites, like the on hiatus Theme Thursday and Photo Friday. There are also a good number of sites to help you improve on your photography, and in this endeavor I will leave you and your friend Google to it. The one thing that you, the photoblogger can do, is be very cautious of what you post. I started out posting all, then it trickled down. Now I post no more than 18 for every day, unless I am out all day and night and have several hundred. Gallery, a free to install tool for setting up a sort of extra's type area is a good idea as well. Be sure, though, to enjoy what you do be it blogging or photoblogigng, or, as in my case, photoblogging and blogging, because without fun, what's the use?
Lumpy would like to thank Geek for this well written and informative answer to a FAQ of LumpysCorner. It is nice to know who to ask and even nicer when you get a useful answer.
Lumpy
