Sprite Stitch Board!

Hey,

So I'm thinking about maybe starting a blog for my cross stitch, printing and artist projects.
I'm wondering if anyone else on here uses Blogger or any other blogging website, and if so what is your opinion on it? the pros and cons.

I know that no one will probably read my blog but I still want to make one so that I can have information about everything I've made in one space.

Thanks for your time,

I tried Wordpress a while back. It was a bit clunky to set up and navigate back through, but once you learn your way around it works pretty well. I really should remember to update it now and then :p

How fun that you are thinking of starting a blog for your crafty stuff!!! That's why I started a blog (I have some other stuff on it...but the craft related posts tend to have the highest views...I'm not uberfocused on that, but it is interesting to see )

I use Blogger!

I LOVE the fact that it ties into my Google Photos! I have the Google Photos app, which backs up all my pics, and it even pulls in my album organization so I can easily find pics that are in albums. You can also pull in photos from a number of different sites (if you have the URL) and upload directly from your device!

Once I got used to it (poke...poking is good!), it's been pretty easy. The interface is fairly standard and comparable to forum controls, but I had to experiment with a couple of things (like scheduling posts...
schedule it AND hit Publish. Took a few tries to figure that out ).

It's also really easy to embed YouTube videos!

There are also a lot of different backgrounds to choose from, as well as different fonts and font colors.

I am also not a fan of having ads on sites that I put my name on, so I was happy to see that I could turn the ads off!

And there's a "Reading Pane," where if you follow any other blogs that are on the Blogger system, you can add the blog to your reading list and then just go to that area on Blogger and see if anyone has posted anything new! (that has nothing to do with actual blogging, but it does save time!)

What I don't like is the mobile app for Blogger. For being a Google product, I think the app is a bit on the lackluster side, so I just post from Chrome on my phone Another issue I have with it is that technically you can customize the text for your comment box...and when I did that, I broke the comment section. Once I undid that, comments could be seen again. And I think there's a template that even though there's a suscribe box, it doesn't work (yay for Reading Pane so I can see when my mom blogs )...but I've only seen that on 1 particular template.

Hope this info helps...and can't wait to see your blog!

Having had blogs and sites on most platforms, I still think that the free Wordpress (wordpress.com sites) is the best for starting out. It used to be stupidly clunky, but years of refinement (and borrowing things from wordpress.org) have really improved it. That said, the more they improved things, the more I lost interest in blogging there, and so I keep forgetting to use it!

Blogger is also pretty good, mostly because of all the Google stuff.

Some people use tumblr for their crafts as well. Can be good as easily shared and reblog'd.

You could also think about Instagram, as photoblogging is very popular and the app is really easy to use.

Hope that helps a bit too!

Thanks everyone for your input, I think I might go with Blogger. It does suck that the mobile version isn't as great but I do like google stuff.
Ill be sure to post the final product once it is done.

blackmageheart wrote: You could also think about Instagram, as photoblogging is very popular and the app is really easy to use.

This is true as well, I'm planning on photoblogging for the art prints that I make but when it comes to cross stitching I want a medium where I can talk more about what it is that I'm doing.

Thanks everyone

Have fun getting it started!

I have found that blogging my projects helps me keep a record. Also I use it for my FlossTube as well.

JemmaJ wrote: Also I use it for my FlossTube as well.

Flosstube? What's that?

Flosstube (at least as far as I know) is the term for YouTube vids/channels that are stitching focused. I've seen a number of WIP update vids and stitch-with-me/stitchalong vids!

I have a self-hosted wordpress blog. I've tried several platforms - tumblr, livejournal, dreamwidth (which is basically like livejournal without ads) and blogger. I don't like blogger because I can never seem to find my way around it, and I've stopped using dreamwidth and livejournal because an image hosting company I used to use went bust and lost my photos on it. I settled on wordpress because I can self-host everything. (There was also a time when I used wordpress.com, but I find it a bit slow uploading, and imported all of my entries to the self-hosted one.)

I don't always keep up with it though and I post entries about anything I feel like sharing. Sometimes it's books and craft-related projects, other times it's other things, so it's a bit of a mix, really. I've cut down on the number of platforms I use because it was too time consuming. My domain is also used for other web projects I have, so it makes more sense for the blog to be on there as well, though I don't tend to use it as much as I'd like to.

I've tried following groups on facebook, but most of those seem to be buying and selling groups, rather than ones where you can discuss crafting and I like this forum because it combines geeky things. (I am not much of a gamer, but as there are Star Wars, Star Trek, etc things on here, I don't mind it.) I use twitter over Instagram because I don't need to mess around with my phone for it, and sometimes it's a lot quicker posting things than the wordpress blog. My twitter is @DeadWintersNigh if anyone is interested.