It seems that the most effective and fast way to share and disseminate your thoughts and viewpoints nowadays is to create a personalised weblog, which we all call “blog”. Blogs provide news, commentaries, opinions on diverse matters, or are just personal diaries of people who want to share their thoughts, experience and ideas with others. Starting and managing a blog is a very easy task. Choosing where to do it is more difficult as there are so many blog platforms existing on Internet.  When you make your choice, try to answer the following questions:

–          What exactly do you plan to do and why?

–          What is your aspiration to start a blog?

–          For how long do you plan to blog?

–          What are your technological skills? Be aware that different blog platforms have different level of usability and flexibility.

–          What is your budget? You can decide to make a simple free blog, or a sophisticated space, with a customised design , which will cost you money.

–          What blog platforms your colleagues and friends use? Talk to others and find out what is their experience in blogging.

Let me help you choosing the right blog platform which suits your needs and plans. After a thorough research online, these are the platforms I find most useful – have a look:

Arts Journal Blogs – The site is a digest of some of the best arts and cultural journalism in the English-speaking world. Each day ArtsJournal features link to stories culled from more than 200 English-language newspapers, magazines and publications featuring writing about arts and culture.

Blogger is a website where you can create an account, name your blog, choose a template and begin posting. It’s easy to post text, photos, and videos from the web or your mobile phone. It provides unlimited flexibility to personalize your blog with themes, gadgets, and more. There is a special section on Art blogging.

Blog.com engages in conversation, discussion or just plain chit-chat with fellow bloggers. You can track your comments on other blog.com blogs, track comments other people make on your blog and track the chatter that ensues. The free package includes hosting with unlimited bandwidth, paid members get more features.

Blogetery.com offers free blog hosting powered by latest WordPress version. You can easily publish text, podcasts, pictures, media files and more with just a single mouse click. It has lots of templates, free sub-domain and anti-spam with lots more features.

Blogsome.com is another WordPress blog site with nice selection of themes. It is easy to use and free, you can also upload photos and personalize your design.

Blogster.com is a free blog and free image hosting platform. It is an online community of people who share interests and activities, and are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Bravenet is a web services site which offers a multitude of tools to users of all abilities. The blogging service has improved greatly of late, with more and better customisation options available. The other integrated features offered, such as web hosting, statistics, counters and site builders, may be useful. Some of these features require a small fee to be activated.

BusyThumbs.com is a blog platform for text messages and camera phone images. It introduces another term – “Moblog” – mobile phone web log, or in other words an online journal or scrapbook that you can send text and images to via your mobile phone.

CMS Matrix: This site is provided as a community service to everyone interested in looking for a means to manage web site content. Here you can discuss, rate, and compare the various systems available on the market today. The tools compares up to ten different systems and you can visit their websites through links maintained on CMS Matrix.

EduBlog is powered by WordPress and hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs for teachers, researchers, librarians and other education professionals. You can easily create, manage and control dozens of blogs without even needing to read the manual, it’s that user-friendly. Edublogs is the ideal solution to run a podcasts, vodcast or upload any kind of media too. Pro users get a massive 5GB and Campus sites have unlimited upload space, so you can easily upload and share your files in two easy clicks.

Geeklog: Geeklog is an open source application for managing dynamic web content. “Out of the box”, it is a blog engine, or a CMS with support for comments, trackbacks, multiple syndication formats, spam protection, and all the other vital features of such a system.

LiveJournal is an online journal service with an emphasis on user interaction. A basic, fully-functional account is free, while Paid accounts receive access to premium features. You can use LiveJournal in many ways: a private journal, a blog, a discussion forum or a social network.

Mashabe focuses exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news and is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides. Mashable’s audience includes early adopters, social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists.

Multiply.com combines blogging with social networking and photo galleries. You can share your photos, videos, and blog posts safely.  You can also create beautiful products such as photo books, calendars and cards.

Open Diary.com is a free space where you can post as much or as little as you want, as often as you want, either publicly, just for your friends, or privately just for you.  Open Diary is full of real-life stories of people from around the world.  You get unlimited storage, advanced features come with affordable subscription rates.

SchoolNotes can help you to create notes for projects, homework, classes and to post them on the web in just seconds, using this free community service.

Squarespace is A fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a website, blog or portfolio. The site gives you full control over your content and site customization. It doesn’t seem free, as there are different price packages.

TeacherTube provides the online community for sharing instructional videos. It functions like YouTube for teachers and educators – the sute’s layout and focus are similar. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner.

TypePad is a paid blogging service which gives users a lot of flexibility and powerful features without the need for much technical knowledge. Multimedia such as video or music are easily added to TypePad blogs, and you can also embed functionality from various websites including Amazon and Skype, as well as choosing whether and how advertising should be included.

Tumbrl is a “mini-blogging” website, allowing you to share anything: post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, and more. You can also easy customise everything – from colors to your theme’s HTML.

WordPress.com is another free blogging service which is popular with businesses and personal users.  This tool is free, and you can set it up on a personal web space or use the free spaces offered at this site.

Vox.com is a great place to build your online neighbourhood.  You can add seamless integration with popular web services like Flickr and YouTube and explore photos, videos, audio materials, share interests with other users.

Xanga.com is a popular online platform which combines free blogging with social networking.

And more blog platforms:

Blogabond.com – A platform for travel blogs including map integration and lots more.

Blog Catalogue has specialised sections on Art blogs and Culture blogs.

Freevlog – Free blogs for video blogging

Netcipia.com – Free blog and wiki for private or public display with 2GB of storage.

ShoutPost.com – Blog platform that specifically focusses on traffic generatiion.

SoulCast.com – Blog site that allows you to post anonymously.

Tooum.com – Blog and fully integrated forum for seamless discussion between the two.

Tumblr.com – Blog platform that focusses on allowing media-rich posts.

Trippert.com – Travel blogs you can create and share.

Ufem.com – Blogging site mainly for women.

Windows Live Spaces provides free blogging with MSN account.

Yahoo 360 – Part of your Yahoo account provides also a space for blogs and social networking.

If you want to add a blog forum to this list, write a comment below.

Finally, there are forums and online communities to help you gain knowledge and understanding about how to blog and how to do it efficiently:

Blog Herald – Premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers

Daily Blog Tips – focusing on blog promotion, monetization and optimization.

Digital Point – a sub-forum related to blogging with other areas of optimization.

Lorelle on WordPress – helping you learn more about blogging and Worldpress.

Problogger – helps bloggers to add income streams to their blogs.

YoungEntrepreneur.com – a “must visit” resource for start-up CEOs, founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, mentors and investors worldwide, reaching an audience that very few can match.

QuickOnlineTips – Technology news, blogging tips, useful computer software and web services.

And don’t forget: the Community space of LabforCulture is a great platform for blogging: announce your ideas, projects and news here!

Read the blog post also on LabforCulture, Research in Focus section.