For as much as I love Autumn, I'm giving myself to Ashes

Post #UKstorm, it's been a relatively quiet day at University so far. As say quiet (getting anywhere via TFL or UK rail services in general is often a complete nightmare) but today has really put a spanner in the works.

Although this does give me a breather and the perfect opportunity to catch up with blogging (do not read "coerced by week 5 of DITA - Web 2.0")...

"University"? "Week 5"? "DITA"? What the... Oh that's right, I haven't updated since starting my Masters in Information Management in the Cultural Sector at City Uni. DITA stands for Digital Information Technologies and Architectures, and it's so far my favourite module. Module leader @ernestopriego has urged us to set up a Wordpress blog. Now, I've dabbled with a few blogging platforms in the past but when I started 23 Things (oh god, yes I mentioned that again - click the link for some uninformed words on blogs) I found that blogger was pretty straight-forward, plain and simple. Wordpress is prettier though and, as far as I know "does more" (I think this is right, purely because work decided to move from blogger to wordpress on the relaunch of the library website: the blog) and it is, again, very simple to use.  Without wanting to repeat myself I though I'd throw down a couple of pros/cons for the blogs we've been asked to explore...

Blogger
Pros: Links with Google profile (everything in one place), relatively straightforward and allows you to play around with it, a blog is a blog is a blog?
Cons: Had a few problems with widgets in the past, haven't figured out how to do mobile blogging, erm... GOOGLE READER, spell check is a bit rubbish.

Wordpress (only use this to create posts, not manage the blog)
Pros: Nice clean edit layout, apparently you can make it look nicer without needing to code (can generally look more professional - infact, do people use this as a platform for a proper website? I think you can achieve a static front page and get a lot more out of the pages/menus, or embed it properly into a website so it lhas the same look and feel), mobile responsive site looks very much like normal site
Cons: Literally can't think of any... But then again I don't use it enough.

Livejournal
Pros: Goat on the error screen (see cons)

Cons: Couldn't load a "create an account page" = not a great start.  Also, really depised the look of the LJ website, I had a look at some of their "top blogs" and didn't like the visual look of those either. Oh and as I mentioned on Twitter, it just kind of reminds me of emos and scene kids, pre-MySpace era.

@JamesAtkinson81 LJ reminds me of the very early 2000s post-MySpace boom. Wordpress I use at work :)

— Nicola Cook (@nicololosaurus) October 28, 2013

Typepad:
Pros: There are some really creative blogs on Typepad.  I don't know why this is a platform I've chosen to avoid (I knew it existed)
Cons: Oh wait, yes I do.... You have to pay to use it.  No thanks.

I feel like Tumblr and Jux should also get a mention - although possibly different types of blog platforms for different outcomes. Very visually appealling, great for image based posts rather than wordy ones, free and super simple to use. The only glaring con with Tumblr is the amount of hours you may lose scrolling through your dashboard...