So, I have an opportunity to write for the local AHL hockey team. I get one of them fancy Press passes and everything. It is going to be done on a blog (at least best I know).

I was wondering if any of you all blog or write in this fashion and have any insight into some of the better blog sites to use. I need one that allows for a decent amount of "personalization" and flexibility.

I am just starting to research this and have done the whole "good blog sites" Google search but need some more practical/trustworthy opinions on this sort of venture.

Thanks for any help y'all can provide.

I use WordPress. Another guy "runs" the blog/site, but it seems to have everything I need to make basic posts. The writing/editing/inserting interface is easy and efficient. The link in my sig is what it looks like, in case you care.

I will check it out. I'm somewhat familiar with wordpress. There's also "blogger". I am interested in actually running my own site too, so we'll see how that goes. I am just doing some info gathering. I've got a good number of research materials that I need to go through, but the tech writings are a little less helpful sometimes than the hands on user experience.

Also, do you use many of the add ons and do you have any "must have" recommendations, or are they all pretty content-specific?

AFAIK, WP is pretty versatile (it's all set up to imbed all the basic stuff) and if you know certain codes you can do a lot of tweaking. i think the only add on used on BTID is the box on the right that also shows a twitter feed.

WordPress all the way

In terms of ease of use and getting a slick, professional looking blog I really enjoy WordPress.

However, I don't find it particularly customizable--at least, not on the free level. There are good themes to pick from, but the themes themselves dictate a lot of things that I wish I could customize, like the number of tabs I can use at the top (ex: "home", "music", "about", etc).

I have much less experience with blogger, but it seems much less intuitive and user friendly, while at the same time being much more customizable.

(I miss the days when the only options for free blogging was, like, Xanga and LiveJournal...)

I am considering going the premium route on Wordpress because then I can customize. I'll need to brush up on my css, though. and, by brush up, I mean learn from scratch.

buying a custom theme from wordpress is totally the way to go. you can get a great-looking, highly customizable theme often for $30-$50. i did that for mine, and couldn't be happier for the amount i had to spend:

rather, i meant *for* wordpress. n stuff.