Setting up a blog- Blogspot or Wordpress? Figure there's enough here that do this and could help me choose!

[SU2]

I'm only at my 2yr mark but I already know I'm going to be the next big thing in bonsai - jk, sorry I couldn't resist, could imagine a couple veterans here reading that title, from my username, and thinking- 'is he insane? He's just learning himself!!'
No, I'm a beginner who's been on an incredibly tight budget since starting, constantly trying to learn what's what as I go, but I've collected or propagated ~100 trees now, they ring my backyard on my DIY bonsai-bench-fence (made of salvaged wood), I do not have anything particularly unique to bring to the table but I do keep very meticulous logs on my projects and my trees, via both my trees' paper-journal and my photos, and I've been trying to keep a curated 'progression album' for many of my trees on imgur (just a photo-hosting site), I keep-up on my imgur-albums primarily because it helps me to learn as I'm going but I'm also frequently sharing images and, frankly, I've been unhappy with a lack of progress-albums on the type of material I do (developing branches on stumps), they're few and far between and often leave-out a bunch of photos - those photos when the tree doesn't look like a bonsai because it's a bush, or if those photos are there, there's not pictures of it right after pruning the bush, then again as the new shoots start, then again mid-way before those new shoots harden & get pruned....my albums *do* have this and I've gotten enough gratitude from people for them (obviously these are beginners relative to me, a beginner!) that I'm now very very fond of the idea of switching from trying to use Imgur as a blog to just using a blog instead (that imgur link in my signature leads to a photo-gallery where I'm trying to curate the pictures in their captions, when an 'article with pictures' format would be far better- am thinking of progress-albums like @Mellow Mullet has on his (absolutely awesome!!) blog heartofdixiebonsai, however I'm unsure whether Wordpress or Blogspot would be better-suited to setting this up!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I've got basic experience with WP and none with BS but am a quick learner, am aiming for as simple-as-can-be, and the only caveat I'm firm on is that I don't want 'commercial links' ie amazon affiliates or anything like that, has to be a 100% non-commercial thing and I'm unsure if WP, BS or both are able to insert those 'amazon affiliate' ads I so-often see on these free-platform bonsai blogs!

Thanks a ton for any suggestions on this, I've gardened since I was young and don't see myself ever losing interest in bonsai, I'm OCD when it comes to taking notes/journaling stuff and, between my notes/journal & my curated imgur, I basically already have everything I need to start a "SU2sBonsaiBeginnings.blogspot" location to just have it all in 1 tidy area, which'd not only let me have a better 'journal' for myself but also facilitate sharing with others (I know I've contributed nothing new, though I think those w/o real funds for bonsai would learn some worthwhile stuff, whether it's collecting&propagating instead of buying, or making your own boxes/benches, making my own substrate, making DIY cement containers, DIY rain-barrells, annealing wire, etc etc, nothing I know is an original idea but 'bonsai on a shoe-string' isn't a theme I've seen on a bonsai-blog before so I thought that would be a cool way of both catalogueing things for myself while at the same time letting me showcase things (obviously I take joy in showing-off my stuff, as I imagine most others do) both for myself and for showing to others!

[I'd reallllly like to do a free version of either site, I couldn't care less about the url (or even site's name) or how plain-jane it comes out, but if the free versions require you to host their amazon-affiliate links I'd be willing to pay for their services to get rid of that....if it's just the WP or BS advertising for their own platforms I'm fine with that, just not 3rd party stuff like amazon or links to retailers. Past that the only thing I can think of is I want comments to be VERY easy to encourage them, as oftentimes I'll have entries (in Imgur, currently) where I'm doing something and am not positive it's the right move, I make clear when I know it's the right move and when I'm just guessing, and - provided anybody ever comes to the site rofl, I'd absolutely love to be able to get comments, so a non-account-required posting/commenting setup would carry a lot of value to me!]

Again, thanks a ton for any help on this, have actually already been playing with a WP site I made a few weeks ago just to get a feel for it but before diving-in and setting everything up I figured to ask here, as I've no familiarity with BlogSpot and notice that Pall uses it (as do others like Bob Pressler's BPbonsai site - one that is very similar to the layout-type that I'm aiming for) but at the same time I see enough on WP (nebari bonsai for one) that I've gotta imagine it's got its perks! I absolutely love the layout of HeartofDixieBonsai, although that's *not* what I'm aiming for, I don't want to have background images, am not aiming to make it pretty, just want it to be a very clear menu so I can separate 'project articles' from 'progression albums' and that's basically it, want it to be as bare-bones a look as-is possible, I think that, stylistically, that makes the best sense given that I'm just a beginner myself and it's important to me that anyone on the site is made to realize quickly that I'm *not* a veteran to be trusted and just a beginner trying to learn and help others learn (I think I may be able to cover that aspect with a good 'tag-line' under the site name, something that makes clear I'm new and am just trying to showcase the things I've done, nothing's more off-putting than someone thinking their stuff's better than it is lol, or that their skills are substantially better than they truly are, I've *gotta* have it so it's clear I'm a beginner, and that it's non-commercial!)

Thanks a ton everyone, would greatly appreciate any help with this, TBH I kind of thought I'd be able to set it up in an afternoon or two but got so stuck-up on details that I've been messing with it for weeks and still unsure I want to commit to WP's platform!

 

[leatherback]

I would say, get yourself a cheapskate hosting provider that has wordpress intergrated. You get to choose your own design, have an email address & decide what you do (comments) and dont (banners) want on your site. For some 24 bucks a year you should be able to get something.

https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/best-cheap-wordpress-hosting/

 

[SU2]

I would say, get yourself a cheapskate hosting provider that has wordpress intergrated. You get to choose your own design, have an email address & decide what you do (comments) and dont (banners) want on your site. For some 24 bucks a year you should be able to get something.

https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/best-cheap-wordpress-hosting/

What benefits are there to that though? I've actually done that before, I still get 'site-lock' emails lol, created a site 'flaramanzanas' (unsure what it means, says it on my toaster oven lol) just to learn and am (was) pretty dexterous with the wordpress software (ie, wordpress.org's software) that I was hosting on (hostgator I think?) some 3rd party server, and paying a name registrar/DNS service for the name....also learned how to setup both LAMP and WAMP stacks, so could theoretically use an old laptop and just have my server in-house, though then I'd have to learn how to protect against spam-bots and the like and I expect that's more hassle than it's worth...so was thinking that, in this case, utilizing the free setups was the best option (really the only thing I'd find worth paying for would be elimination of ads, if I have to host some affiliate-link stuff on a free account then I'd pay to get rid of that, but otherwise there's no features I want that'd cost money, I just need to be able to setup 3 or 4 'tabs' or 'sections' for a site-hierarchy, and put text+pics in them, and have the ability to manage the content after the fact....easy peasy, I'd think!! Was easily 5+ years ago, in a very very boring period of unemployment, that I bothered messing with that stuff, thought I'd give it a try as the idea of studying it to become professional was on my mind at the time...didn't find it to be something I'd want to do as a job, especially after speaking with 'webmasters'/'webdevs' that do this professionally and so frequently lament how toxic relationships tend to become with their tech-naive clients who want far more for their $ than is fair/logical)

I know the benefits of wordpress.org's software, compared to wordpress.com's use of the same software while restricting you to their server-space&DNS services, and for what I'm trying to do here I just can't see any reasons/benefits for my use-case...I actually prefer it being very clear this is intended as a low-effort (in terms of site-presentation, not content!!) site, 100% non-commercial, and intended to be & always remain a site for me simply share my prog-albums & things I did that I thought were quasi-novel or neat, an 'obviously crummy' site gives the bare-bones effect I'm actually seeking here, I think that if I had "SU2'sBonsai.com" and associated emails it'd feel silly to me, there'd just be no need for any of that and it'd make me feel like I was coming-across as if I were trying to make more out of it than what it was (as mentioned, I'm going to have it setup in a way where it's dead-obvious what my experience/skill level is and how I'm still learning, both on the site-level - probably as an About Me tab - and in any individual article, if I'm making a prune I'm unsure of I make a point to note that in my journal & imgur and would do so on my site- it's probably unlikely but I do hold some hope that, sometime, someday, maybe I will get a useful comment or two on something I post!) I like it looking more like a 'personal site that's made public' than something 'designed for the public', if that makes sense? Was Long day, hard to words properly

 

[Mellow Mullet]

I used to use Wordpress, but it has limitations if you want to has a lot of different pages like a traditional web site (unless it has changed, it has been a while), and I was constantly getting hacked.

I got web hosting through a good provider for 94.00 a year with a lot of bells and whistles, and use joomla for my CMS. On top of that I installed a template called FLEX to dress it up. You can do anything you want with that set up, even set up a market place, forums, etc. I am still learning and the software is capable of far more than I throw at it. It isn't too hard, I don't have any formal computer training, heck, they did not even have computers when I was in HS and only a few in college, cell phones either.

 

[milehigh_7]

I use Wordpress and the only problems I have had are from woo-commerce which is the shopping cart plugin. I use iPage for my host and for the price I don't think they can be beat.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

WP free is very easy to use. I use the app on my iPad. It sounds like you could accomplish your objective by creating a new page for each tree and post updates to each page through editing. You could either edit the page itself to keep the images and captions chronological as you scroll down, otherwise posts will be new on top of old posts. The free option had plenty of space for my purposes for several years of photo-heavy posts. About a year ago I upgraded to the paid site for $100/year and enabled word ads to offset the cost. PM me if you want to discuss more, Good luck!

 

[SU2]

I used to use Wordpress, but it has limitations if you want to has a lot of different pages like a traditional web site (unless it has changed, it has been a while), and I was constantly getting hacked.

I got web hosting through a good provider for 94.00 a year with a lot of bells and whistles, and use joomla for my CMS. On top of that I installed a template called FLEX to dress it up. You can do anything you want with that set up, even set up a market place, forums, etc. I am still learning and the software is capable of far more than I throw at it. It isn't too hard, I don't have any formal computer training, heck, they did not even have computers when I was in HS and only a few in college, cell phones either.

Thanks a ton, your site specifically was one where I just couldn't figure out whether you'd used WP or BS and was starting to suspect it was a custom CMS deployment, that makes sense! How hard was learning Joomla?

I can't say I wouldn't be interested in going that route at some point if I find I'm happy doing that extra 25% of 'chronicling' that turns my notes into 'public consumption' format (that's why this seems such a good idea to me, because I already keep such thorough notes&pics, so it's really just formatting it to a blog instead of imgur+my laptop!!) but, for the time being, I actually think the most bare-bones setup is best- your site is quite truly an A+ quality site (obviously your bonsai-game is A+ too, but I mean the site's presentation), but you've got really nice stuff to fill it with- mine's the opposite, not a single finished tree and only a score or two that you could argue are 'pre-bonsai', if I setup my site to the quality of yours I feel it'd almost be misrepresentative, I want it so that no matter where you land on my site it is clear that it's a "throwaway" blog by a beginner, when I'm on your blog it's easy enough to feel like that it represents a full scale commercial operation (maybe it does- I've only looked at your trees, am unsure if you retail on it or not, if you were selling gear & trees your site already has that polished look), am trying for almost the opposite of that, am not going to misspell letters lol but I want it to be very very bare-bones&straight forward (was actually hoping to do it w/o javascript, as I block JS by default and want my site to work 100% for others who block by default, but that seems impossible with the basic WP.com setup...I can live with that though, so long as WP isn't able to litter any ads on the site!)

Thanks again for the reply, have always considered your site's design as one of the top I'd seen amongst hobbyists and kinda expected it was CMS and not pre-packaged WP/BS software, very good to know for the future as, in some years when I've actually got a bunch of pre-bonsai and some trees approaching 'real bonsai', I may want to make a sharp, shiny site like yours- I think it'd be off-putting if I did that now, having such a beautiful layout to display a bunch of in-development stock, IMO it gives the feel of trying to use the site's good formatting to enhance the display of the trees and that's only a "good fit" if you've got the materials to showcase (you do, I don't!!) Appreciate the info, am curious how hard it was to learn Joomla after WP! I've already made sure I can migrate all my data easily-enough if/when I decide to change to something else and, were I in a position where I wanted more than WP.com type offerings, I'd definitely be inclined towards CMS instead of WP software, joomla is one I hear mentioned quite a bit on the sub-reddits I read&discuss these things on!

 

[Mellow Mullet]

Thanks a ton, your site specifically was one where I just couldn't figure out whether you'd used WP or BS and was starting to suspect it was a custom CMS deployment, that makes sense! How hard was learning Joomla?

I can't say I wouldn't be interested in going that route at some point if I find I'm happy doing that extra 25% of 'chronicling' that turns my notes into 'public consumption' format (that's why this seems such a good idea to me, because I already keep such thorough notes&pics, so it's really just formatting it to a blog instead of imgur+my laptop!!) but, for the time being, I actually think the most bare-bones setup is best- your site is quite truly an A+ quality site (obviously your bonsai-game is A+ too, but I mean the site's presentation), but you've got really nice stuff to fill it with- mine's the opposite, not a single finished tree and only a score or two that you could argue are 'pre-bonsai', if I setup my site to the quality of yours I feel it'd almost be misrepresentative, I want it so that no matter where you land on my site it is clear that it's a "throwaway" blog by a beginner, when I'm on your blog it's easy enough to feel like that it represents a full scale commercial operation (maybe it does- I've only looked at your trees, am unsure if you retail on it or not, if you were selling gear & trees your site already has that polished look), am trying for almost the opposite of that, am not going to misspell letters lol but I want it to be very very bare-bones&straight forward (was actually hoping to do it w/o javascript, as I block JS by default and want my site to work 100% for others who block by default, but that seems impossible with the basic WP.com setup...I can live with that though, so long as WP isn't able to litter any ads on the site!)

Thanks again for the reply, have always considered your site's design as one of the top I'd seen amongst hobbyists and kinda expected it was CMS and not pre-packaged WP/BS software, very good to know for the future as, in some years when I've actually got a bunch of pre-bonsai and some trees approaching 'real bonsai', I may want to make a sharp, shiny site like yours- I think it'd be off-putting if I did that now, having such a beautiful layout to display a bunch of in-development stock, IMO it gives the feel of trying to use the site's good formatting to enhance the display of the trees and that's only a "good fit" if you've got the materials to showcase (you do, I don't!!) Appreciate the info, am curious how hard it was to learn Joomla after WP! I've already made sure I can migrate all my data easily-enough if/when I decide to change to something else and, were I in a position where I wanted more than WP.com type offerings, I'd definitely be inclined towards CMS instead of WP software, joomla is one I hear mentioned quite a bit on the sub-reddits I read&discuss these things on!

"am not going to misspell letters lol "

Oh yes you will, it does not matter how many times that you proof read it yourself, you won't catch all of them. I find stuff all the time that I need to correct, my most recent post has several I need to straighten out. Two important rules I have made for myself----1. Do not crate a post after drinking all day or night, it never works out; and 2. If you get real sleepy while working on it, quit while you are ahead.

Thanks for all the compliments on my website, it is a work in progress. The software is definitely capable of more than I have used, take a look at the template demo: https://themeforest.net/item/flex-m...j-rBvw81jnV3Rl7_fs2qFC5Nyct93SUYaAkKCEALw_wcB . There is a live demo there, it is pretty slick. It uses SPpagebuilder to create the pages so it is easy once you figure it out. It is not too hard to figure out, I don't have computer training and this is the only the second website I have made. My old one used MS Frontpage which was nothing like Joomla.

Joomla is not too hard to figure out either and you can actually make a fairly decent blog or website using it alone and there are some basic free templates available if you want to use one. They also have a lot of components, addons and plugins to add different features, kinda like WP. If you get stuck there are numerous online sites, forums, and even youtube videos to help. If I can do it anyone, can.

When I first thought about creating HOD Bonsai, I did a lot of research on whether to go WP blog or web site, after a lot of reading, the site won out. If you plan to eventually create a full blown site, I would go with joomla. In the beginning you can set up to be just a blog, that was all that I had for the first few months, then slowly add to it as your content grows and you have time (time is my biggest limiter, I have a ton of stuff that I want to post) you can add pages or whatever you need, in other words, grow with you. All of your content will be right there.

As far as how far along you are or your appraisal of the quality of your trees, it does not matter as far as your blog/site goes. I would read it, technique is technique, whether on a two year old sapling or 50 year old tree. You can also, on the landing page, explain that you are new to the sport of bonsai (lol, I like to say it that way because people argue just about as much about bonsai as the do competing teams) and are setting up the blog/site to chronicle your journey and show the progression
of the trees. I wish I would have started years ago.

John

 

[SU2]

I use Wordpress and the only problems I have had are from woo-commerce which is the shopping cart plugin. I use iPage for my host and for the price I don't think they can be beat.

Good stuff, thanks!! Did you ever host anything on WP.com? Am basically trying to 'steel man' an argument to myself for paying for a higher-tiered service but, if I'm exclusively putting up text&pictures and intentionally making it simple/basic, it seems the .com platform is capable (I'm not aiming for anything even approaching the quality of your TOL site- btw I hope the issues have been resolved, I'll have to check it out again!!), I'm also actually thinking the ".wordpress.com" location works in my favor here insofar as making-clear that it's strictly intended for display only (I fear that anything 'nicer' will juxtapose poorly with what I'm actually trying to present, ie I think a nice fancy site will make it look like I'm trying to present my trees as better than they truly are, and/or give the idea I'm angling to sell something- both of those are things I want to be 100% clearly not the case, am not planning to put a nice picture in the background or mes with the layout-graphics or anything like that so that the site's "visual aesthetic" is on-par with my trees' aesthetic, ie 'a work in progress' ;D )

----------------------

WP free is very easy to use. I use the app on my iPad. It sounds like you could accomplish your objective by creating a new page for each tree and post updates to each page through editing. You could either edit the page itself to keep the images and captions chronological as you scroll down, otherwise posts will be new on top of old posts. The free option had plenty of space for my purposes for several years of photo-heavy posts. About a year ago I upgraded to the paid site for $100/year and enabled word ads to offset the cost. PM me if you want to discuss more, Good luck!

I'm so glad you've replied (I was actually having trouble recalling whose site Nebari was- epic site fwiw, though you already know that!), I really love what you've done with your site in fact it's precisely what you've got across the top of your site that I'm trying w/o success to figure-out and is the crux of why I made this thread!! I've already setup a 'throwaway' blog on wordpress.com to "get a feel" and it's the way you have your tabs across the top so that, on your site's landing-page, there's clear "categories" they can see ('Gallery', 'Pots', 'Shimpaku'), I just cannot figure-out how to do that on wordpress and started to think it was some plug-in and that maybe BS would be better....my control-panel only allows creation of "site pages" and "blog posts", cannot find any way to make it hierarchical (I'm only trying for 3 categories across the side or top of the landing-page: progress albums, articles, and 'about'), I see you still have the .wordpress.com ending on the site so it makes me think you're using the free version but I can't figure out how you're getting 'categories' on your landing page like that, is it a plug-in or am I just missing something obvious? Have been making site & blog posts on it and can't make it hierarchical, was thinking the free WP just doesn't do that (ie forces chronological-blogging only) but upon re-looking at your site and seeing you've got the '.wordpress.com' address I'm excited that maybe I can have 'categories' on the free wp.com platform!!! (that's literally all I need to figure out before putting everything up, the sole issue I'm having with the free wp.com platform is my inability to get hierarchical categories displayed on my landing page[or to exist at all] so I can then populate them with my prog-albums & articles re projects I was happy with or found interesting! Like, I'd want the prog-albums I have in my Imgur to be 'posts' under that particular tree's header, which would be under the 'progress albums' header...that's 3 levels of hierarchy and wp.com is offering two, "site post" and "blog post", cannot figure out how to crouch content into categories/hierarchies! Ugh!!)

 

[SU2]

"am not going to misspell letters lol "

Oh yes you will, it does not matter how many times that you proof read it yourself, you won't catch all of them. I find stuff all the time that I need to correct, my most recent post has several I need to straighten out. Two important rules I have made for myself----1. Do not crate a post after drinking all day or night, it never works out; and 2. If you get real sleepy while working on it, quit while you are ahead.

ROFL that's great and you're very right!! I've been posting on forums since college (so over a decade now!) and have probably learned this as much as my brain's capable of learning it haha, in the end sometimes you're just sleepy and you think you're not too sleepy to submit Thanks for mentioning it though, it's a valid worry and I do mess-up posting things (not on bonsai-boards) that I probably should've held-off on (sometimes, pretty rare nowadays thankfully ), when it comes to my blog my idea for putting up content was to do an automatic 1-day delay for anything, like right now I'm doing a lot of messing-around with lime sulfur, wetted ashes and black paint (trying to get realistic-looking deadwood on deciduous stock), it's the type of thing I'll surely have an article about, but once I've finished and 'chosen' my favorite ratio and everything and I write-out the article / setup the pictures, my plan was to wait til the next day to publish it....I've found that, in ongoing email conversations and things like that, that you often 'think of what you should've said' in the hours / day after you wrote it, for that reason I'd actually be 'finishing' my content then waiting a day before putting it up (or, in emails, I tend to write what I would've sent, leave it as a draft overnight, then send in the am if I don't have any edits to make- at least a quarter+ of the time, there's edits!)

Thanks for all the compliments on my website, it is a work in progress. The software is definitely capable of more than I have used, take a look at the template demo: https://themeforest.net/item/flex-m...j-rBvw81jnV3Rl7_fs2qFC5Nyct93SUYaAkKCEALw_wcB . There is a live demo there, it is pretty slick. It uses SPpagebuilder to create the pages so it is easy once you figure it out. It is not too hard to figure out, I don't have computer training and this is the only the second website I have made. My old one used MS Frontpage which was nothing like Joomla.

Joomla is not too hard to figure out either and you can actually make a fairly decent blog or website using it alone and there are some basic free templates available if you want to use one. They also have a lot of components, addons and plugins to add different features, kinda like WP. If you get stuck there are numerous online sites, forums, and even youtube videos to help. If I can do it anyone, can.

Oh np man thanks for taking the time to share all that!! I only learned what a bald cypress was this past winter, during collection-time, I've now got two beasty BC's growing like weeds and your site is easily 25%+ of where I look whenever thinking of wiring something or just reading about BC's! (will probably get to making the thread later and was already planning to tag you as, unfortunately, my super-vigorous BC has, over the past week, been developing little brown-tips on its supplest growth, on literally every branch/leaf there's at least one leaflet whose tip is brown at its last 0.5-->2mm of its tip, no idea what's causing it but it's getting a lil worse everyday...will have pics in the thread for that!)

Thanks for mentioning youtube, I use them in a knee-jerk manner for lots of stuff and for some reason just haven't thought it that applicable for wp stuff (was thinking I'd be far better off with articles but have googled and just get myself down 'rabbit holes' and still can't figure out the problem I've been having with the free wp.com platform...have a tester-site up right now to toy with and cannot get it do to anything besides chronological blog posts and I half suspect it's me and not the site, youtube's a great idea thanks I watch youtubes of bonsai stuff almost every morning with my coffee lol I can't believe I didn't think to turn there for wp tutorials!)

When I first thought about creating HOD Bonsai, I did a lot of research on whether to go WP blog or web site, after a lot of reading, the site won out. If you plan to eventually create a full blown site, I would go with joomla. In the beginning you can set up to be just a blog, that was all that I had for the first few months, then slowly add to it as your content grows and you have time (time is my biggest limiter, I have a ton of stuff that I want to post) you can add pages or whatever you need, in other words, grow with you. All of your content will be right there.

Yeah this was certainly a concern, because I expect to have most of these trees a long time (am trying to trade some things but most of my trees I intend to develop for....my life, I guess!) and very much like the idea of detailed progress-albums that, in the future, would stretch back years- though I've verified that getting your data off WP is always do-able and that back-ups are straight-forward enough (that's one of the first things I'll be trying to do is setup a drive at my house that's setup to periodically back-up my blog, because I'll be ditching my written journal, my folders of .docs on my laptop and won't be keeping 'well organized' photo albums of my own, will be using my site as my own cataloging and that's definitely something I wouldn't want to risk by WP getting hacked or having errors or something! Out of curiosity, how frequent do you back-up your site?)
I can certainly see a possibility of, sometime in years from now, having my trees developed enough that I'd be wanting to better-highlight them by making my site's layout a bit nicer, but with backups I should always have the ability to simply swap-over to joomla and pay 3rd party hosting&DNS, will be a much larger growing-pain for sure (compared to setting-up better off the bat) but that's fine, I want super-simplicity from my end so when I'm on the site I'm basically *exclusively* there to add/alter content, not the site's layout/flow (for instance I like the idea of setting up an instagram account and having it in featured in the blog, would let me post things I wanted to post but didn't fit anywhere on their own, but just the idea of setting up / maintaining that is more complexity than I want, wanna just write/add pictures/submit ;D )

As far as how far along you are or your appraisal of the quality of your trees, it does not matter as far as your blog/site goes. I would read it, technique is technique, whether on a two year old sapling or 50 year old tree. You can also, on the landing page, explain that you are new to the sport of bonsai (lol, I like to say it that way because people argue just about as much about bonsai as the do competing teams) and are setting up the blog/site to chronicle your journey and show the progression
of the trees. I wish I would have started years ago.

John

Thanks, well-put and I'm totally on the same page!! I'm going to have an 'About' that's going to be very clear about my time in the hobby and what I'm doing, am actually trying to figure out a non-lame way to work something into the title or, if not, into the tag-line under the title (like, "SU2's bonsai's" doesn't sound good to me, "SU2's beginnings in bonsai.wp.com" would be far more of what I'm trying to do), I've been on a shoe-string 'bonsai-budget' since starting and whether it's acquisition of trees, substrate, containers, benching, or some of the things I've found in propagating bougies that I *think* are unique, I think some will find interest/value in it, and - so long as done right - it should be a simple-enough way for me to catalog the things I'm already cataloging for myself*and* in this format they're laid-out better for me as well!!

Thanks again for these replies, incredibly appreciated! And also thanks again for your site!!

 

[leatherback]

have always considered your site's design as one of the top I'd seen amongst hobbyists and kinda expected it was CMS and not pre-packaged WP/BS software

You do not need to worry about learning a special package though. You can get that style with WPP just fine too, if you are already verged in its use. e.g., www.growingbonsai.net is also a wp deployment.

 

[Maros]

Blogpost works well, completely free. No advertising needed. You can customise your design a lot. True is Google is not updating it too much. But still it is easy to create and use.

 

[Fonz]

Hell, I started my shitty blog when I was only 6 months into bonsai
I'm using wordpress for a bunch of my sites for 10 years now. Only pay for domain-addons. I used to pay for hosting when I was a professional web designer but free stuff works as well. As long as no more than 2 people a day visit my blog I don't mind the advertisements
Never used blogpost so can't comment on that.

 

[SU2]

Firstly, thanks a ton for all the input on this, am quite nervous about it all to be honest but think it'll be all smooth once I understand setup and am discussing it with veterans on WP forums now for help, unsure WTH my problem with 'nesting'/hierarchies is (just want a simple '2 part' site, prog albums and articles, but the prog albums page has to have individual trees that have their own 'nested' albums within that, and with WP only offering "site" and "blog" entry options I'm just hitting a wall on how to nest a '3 tiered' hierarchy as I want...have been assured I can do this with the basic/free WP platform but just cannot figure it out, hopefully my newest replies to my WP forum Q's will pave the way and I can start populating my site today

You do not need to worry about learning a special package though. You can get that style with WPP just fine too, if you are already verged in its use. e.g., www.growingbonsai.net is also a wp deployment.

What is WPP? Given that I'm trying to be as bare-bones as possible I don't want anything premium unless it's the only way to have a non-advertising platform (ie restricting WP from putting ads in my sidebars, ads are a big sticking point for me I won't have a site with ads), but so far as style, while I love the site you just linked me it's not what I'm trying to do, something like @Brian Van Fleet 's site only (intentionally) less-polished than that, I really want the "I'm a beginner and this is what I've learned so far that I think other beginners would be able to learn from" them to be strong, will have an 'about' that is clear on things IE how long I've spent in bonsai, how what I'm doing is only what I know so far and how, in my prog-albums's captions & my articles I will be taking great pains to not just explain what I'm doing/have done but also the things I was unsure of (and update in the future with how the gamble turned-out in such cases), very much want it to be that way not only for my "long-term chronicle" of my trees' histories for myself but also for anyone who does happen to spend any time on my blog (am unsure if it's reasonable to expect a couple visitors a day, or one a week, would still do it even if it were once a week though as I know this would've been INVALUABLE to me ~2yrs ago when I was starting up, being that I had no disposable income I had to DIY everything, for stock acquisition to containers to benches, and truly believe my approach puts me in the highest echelons of 'ROI' in bonsai, on how much I've been able to do with such little $ by making my own substrates, annealing my own wire, etc etc I have over 10 articles on "DIY ways to get good results" in various things, my favorite is how easy it was to get decent quickly at building cement/mortar containers but have a bunch and expect they'll be real useful to anyone who's on a budget *and* in an area they can collect indigenous trees with ease (or propagate stuff well enough!), so am realllly hoping someone(s) get value from it but in the end even if I got zero visitors ever I'd have my awesome chronicle of my trees' progress-journeys which is worth more than any time spent writing articles on, say, how $20 and an hour of time gets you a TON of great wire, or the tips&tricks I found in making form-cast mortar containers)

Blogpost works well, completely free. No advertising needed. You can customise your design a lot. True is Google is not updating it too much. But still it is easy to create and use.

Have you used WP as well?

Hell, I started my shitty blog when I was only 6 months into bonsai
I'm using wordpress for a bunch of my sites for 10 years now. Only pay for domain-addons. I used to pay for hosting when I was a professional web designer but free stuff works as well. As long as no more than 2 people a day visit my blog I don't mind the advertisements
Never used blogpost so can't comment on that.

Thanks! When you say you 'only pay for domain-addons', are you referring to the WP-software add-ons (widgets?) or to paying the fee to get rid of the .wordpress. in the url? I actually like that in the title as it further cements that this is a beginner's blog, am realllly going to be going to lengths to make-clear I'm new enough myself and still learning, and that the purpose of the site is to impart good, detailed prog-albums as well as to present articles on how to spend nothing/next-to-nothing and still have specimen, benches, containers, wire, substrate etc etc, but it's important to me the site in NO way looks like "My trees are awesome come check them out!" because that couldn't be further from the truth, I have >100 trees but nothing that's past "pre-bonsai" stage and, as I collect/propagate all my stock, very little of it is "good" in any traditional sense (most material is odd, things I'll end up trying 'Fairy Tale Style' approaches on, graham potter is my lead - actually one of my only, besides sandevbonsai - inspiration in turning 'blocky stock' into something worthwhile!)

Am confused what you mean re 2 people per day / adverts? Just 2 people means you're not making $, but you *do* have the effect of the site's integrity being suspect...I don't know if I'm just inherently more cynical than most, but if I go to a site (my bonsai obsession, for example) and see the amazon affiliate link, and the content isn't immediately obvious as *outstanding*, I immediately see it as someone who's got a bonsai hobby and figures they can show-off (which is fun for us all, of course) while cashing-in, something I find distasteful if your trees aren't at least at the level where you're competing with them (or they're competition-quality, the act of competing isn't the important part but yeah til I have trees that I'd be proud of showing-off it's important my site never comes across as "check out how good I am at bonsai" because IMO it's too easy for it to appear that way if not countered intentionally, I mean I'm very proud of where my garden is right now but I've no delusions about just how early everything is in its developmental phase!!)

Thanks again for the reply, very appreciated! TBH, you mention google....I hadn't even considered SEO, I guess I was just thinking that people would find it when, after I've got articles up, I can share them on the forums, and people can see that and then choose to read further into my site or not (need to figure-out the 'norms' here, IE I'm currently picturing that, if I wrote an article I wanted out, that I'd post the *text* and pictures of the article, and simply a link to it on my site at the bottom of the post....am guessing it's probably not the norm to just post a topic that's simply a link!)

 

[leatherback]

WPP = Wordpres page

That must be the longest sentence I have ever come across. To be honesst, I have not read the whole thing you just wrote. For your site, please consider using dots a bit more, and commas a bit less..

 

[Maros]

Have you used WP as well?

No on the blog page