Blogs...Blog Roll thread made me wonder

[1Timothy115]

I never had time to discuss blogs in the past and never thought I would want to but, I've had a change of mind. It appears a lot of sites are available for these. Could some of you help me understand some of the following:

How do I start a blog?

Who can see your blog once you start one?

How secure is a blog from others editing/spamming/etc?

Can others leave comments about your blog comments?

Is there a cost involved with having a blog?

Is there a way to prevent obscene ads from appearing on your blog page?

Is there a lot of time required to create a blog page?

A lot of people here use http://blogspot.com/ is this a Christian blog location?

Can someone provide a few best practice or best in class example pages?

[Danny Carlton]

I never had time to discuss blogs in the past and never thought I would want to but, I've had a change of mind. It appears a lot of sites are available for these. Could some of you help me understand some of the following:

How do I start a blog?

You can use one of the free blogging services like http://blogger.com or http://homeschoolblogger.com, or you can set up your own on a hosting account.

Who can see your blog once you start one?

Anyone, if you want. There are ways to limit who sees it, but what would be the point?

How secure is a blog from others editing/spamming/etc?

Pretty secure except for comments, depending on how it's set up.

Can others leave comments about your blog comments?

Generally

Is there a cost involved with having a blog?

Not for the free ones. The hosting option can be as low as $5 a month

Is there a way to prevent obscene ads from appearing on your blog page?

If you you use http://homeschoolblogger.com there'd be clean ads. If you did your own via hosting, you don't even need ads.

Is there a lot of time required to create a blog page?

The free services have a variety of templates. Even using a hosting plan the scripts come with a few templates

A lot of people here use http://blogspot.com/ is this a Christian blog location?

Definitely not. They also host blogs by pedophiles.

Can someone provide a few best practice or best in class example pages?

My blog's a http://JackLewis.net. My wife's at http://LindaCarlton.net.

[kevinmiller]

Blogspot doesn't have ads on your blog and you can tightly control who can comment on your posts, which can range from no comments at all to unlimited. Blogspot is the best that I've used. It's quick, easy and doesn't have a lot of needless garbage on it.

[anime4christ]

I replied to this on the blogroll thread, except for this one:

A lot of people here use http://blogspot.com/ is this a Christian blog location?

No, Blogger (which uses the domain blogspot.com for the actual blogs) is just a free blogging service open to anyone and is owned by Google. So, it's just as Christian as say Youtube: You can have Christian content on there, but not all the users' content is Christian.