Blog hosting: what to select?

[Qwertyu]

Hello everyone!

I've decided to make a personal blog and I have a question: what blog hosting to select? My requirements are:
1. It should be pretty popular (hence, it must have lots of people from various countries and spheres of life).
2. It should have an effective and convenient mechanism for communicating with other people. That is, I should be able to find other people by (say) their interests, and have a possibility to communicate with them (via comments to their posts, PMs etc.).
3. And it would be great if this hosting provides some convenient means for creating beautiful design for my blog.

Thank you in advance!

[?]

Tumblr.

[Highrated Hosting]

For what you want to do there is no doubt wordpress is the more used and has the largest community for your endeavor. They have lots of themes to choose from to make your design as customized as possible and lots of extra add-ons called plugins that will help you even more to make your site more customized. There are some host that even specialize in Wordpress hosting. here are a few places to look for you.

http://wordpress.org/
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
http://highratedhosting.com/hosting-reso...ree+Themes

[Johnny Answers]

Here's a quick break down of some of the options you have. No option is "better" or "the Best" out there. That is all a matter of taste and what works for you personally. Try them all out and see what works for you.

Wordpress.com - A large community for blogging with social features built in. It's also a good starting point on the path to one day getting a host and creating your own website. Wordpress.org is the same software that Wordpress.com uses and it's free to use when hosting your own site with hosting providers like FastWebBuilder.com . When Wordpress is installed you can add the wordpress jetpack plugin to link your hosted blog and your free wordpress blog

Blogger.com - Blogger is owned by Google so they have integrated all of their services with it, including Google Plus, YouTube etc. Blogger tends to reach many more people over seas.

LiveJournal.com - This is kind of the Grand Daddy of blogs. They were originally out of San Fran, but are now owned by a Russian media company. Still a very good site with many features for interacting socially.

Tumblr.com - Tumblr is a new comer and has a lot of social activities associated with it along with the standard blogging capabilities. Tumblr has made it's niche on integrating many social networking features.

I would suggest getting an account with all of them since they are free. In order to reach the most people you may want to link your blog to multiple sites so you are easily found.

You should then get a Stumbleupon.com account so you can share your blog with other like minded people. It is a great social bookmarking service that will help you expand your horizons while your blog reaches many other people.

When you get your blog up and going you should probably look into getting a domain name as well. I've had great service with Fast Web Builder and their prices are pretty good. You can get your domain name and point it to your blog. You can find more information here:
http://fastwebbuilder.com/domain-names-registration-2/

You may also want to look into using either Joomla or Drupal on your new host. They have plugins that can link you to many social networks all at once.

http://fastwebbuilder.com/joomla-web-hosting/

http://fastwebbuilder.com/drupal-web-hosting/

There is something to be said for having your own site and not being tied into one service. Just remember to have fun with your blog and others will enjoy it as well.

I wish you the best of luck on your new blog!