My blog here is managed by Google’s Blogger and hosted on my own web site on a Rails Playground server. This is done by giving Blogger FTP access to my site that is used to upload the pages when they change. Sadly Google are deprecating this FTP feature and I will either have to run the blog from the Blogger’s servers (but I can use my own domain name) or host the my blog myself.
I have always had a plan in place to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress. This will continue to be hosted on my web site and the URLs will not change. You never know when a service will disappear so I tend to plan ahead like this. There is a nice migration path and this is currently my favoured solution.
My main concern about moving to WordPress is the amount of comment spam that friends get despite using recaptcha. I have had to disable the comments on the BarCampNorthEast web site that was receiving a couple of spam comments a day.
So, do you think I am doing the right thing. Should I use WordPress or something else? Should I use another comment service like Disqus to cut down on spam, or should I host the whole thing somewhere else? All comments welcome (unless they are spam :-) ).
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I could do with following your progress ;) (http://jon.spriggs.org.uk/blog is in the same boat… grr 0.5% my arse)
When I migrated all my blogs from Blogger to self-hosted WP instances in 2008, I found it was the best thing I could do. Have had no trouble since.
Re: spam – I get a bit, but Akismet catches a lot and you can always tell WP not to let you see it until it's moderated. It's really not that onerous.
I've been using WordPress to manage my personal website for a fair few years now. Comment spam *is* an issue, however as Caz says Akismet generally does a very good job of trapping anything that looks spammy.
There are also built in tools which allow you to define a set of triggers which would place a comment in moderation, so a comment with a certain number of links or with a specific keyword would be held in moderation until you OK'd it.
Its certainly something you should be aware of when using WordPress but I personally don't view it as a deal breaker, I have to intervene manually very infrequently.
Something else you've probably already considered but may be worth mentioning to others; WordPress is a common target for hackers and vulnerabilities are exposed every now and again. The WordPress team are usually great at issuing updates and will notify you via the admin panel, however upgrading is a manual process, albeit relatively easy. I guess a little maintenance comes with the territory when you're hosting these things yourself.
I would agree that Akismet seems to solve the problems for me so I would vote WordPress.
I have heard good things about squarespace but they do the hosting themselves.
The iphone plugin for wordpress is very good too. – Matt