Blog hosting for mom

January 18, 2012 4:15 AM

Help me choose the best place to make a blog for my mom.

My mother has asked me to set up a blog for her. I know just enough about blogging to know there is a lot of sites, softwares, etc, to choose from. So I ask experienced mefite bloggers to make suggestions for blog hosting based on the following criteria:

- wants her own .com domain
- supports text and images
- good or at least half-decent security record
- editorial control over comments (spam prevention)
- free is best, cheap can be made to work too
- easy interface as mom is not computer literate
- we will need to have a way to keep all posts for when/if we have to migrate
- this will be 100% legal so we don't need a host that overlooks copyright infringement or anything like that

Thanks in advance!

posted by CautionToTheWind to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Wordpress.com, .org if she wants more control over the design of the blog.
posted by litnerd at 4:23 AM on January 18, 2012

+1 to wordpress.com; it's full featured, flexible, and free. The interface can be a little overwhelming at first, but the basics of posting and managing comments are pretty straightforward.
posted by maxim0512 at 4:42 AM on January 18, 2012

Thank you both.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 6:27 AM on January 18, 2012

I'll just time in to say Wordpress.com as well; I'm not sure why I like it so much better than Blogger, since I really don't use many of the advanced features, but I do.
posted by SNWidget at 6:45 AM on January 18, 2012

Definitely Wordpress, but if you'd like to do the hosting I would suggest using HostGator and buying the Hatchling plan.

It's $3.96/month and they make it very easy to install WordPress on your domain and managing everything including free email service @yourdomain.com, etc.

I've been using it myself for over a year now and I'm very pleased! Plus you can't go wrong with unlimited bandwidth.
posted by cassini at 9:09 AM on January 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

If I recall correctly, if you want to use Wordpress.com but have your own domain, it will cost you a few bucks. (Wordpress is on blackout today I believe, so that may be hard to verify.)

Tumblr is also worth considering, it's even easier to use than Wordpress and allows you to use your own domain for free. Tumblr is less-oriented towards having discussions in comments though. You'd probably want to add a Disquis plug-in for that if that's an important aspect for you.
posted by philipy at 10:28 AM on January 18, 2012

Worpress is great, easy to use and free.

Wordpress also has an options to have your own .com. Instead of littlemy.worpress.com you could have littlemy.com.

I (think) it cost about $17/ year.
posted by LittleMy at 10:31 AM on January 18, 2012

Thank you very much!
posted by CautionToTheWind at 1:43 AM on January 19, 2012