Thought i’d ask the Singletrack hive mind on this one. I’ve recently starting writing a blog to document the work from my MA in Design.

Check out http://www.bywadesign.wordpress.com

So i decided to start out using wordpress. But I am finding it clumsy and time consuming to blog from. For instance adding photos is really slow and they are not displayed as nicely as i’d like [although I know how they are displayed is largely down to the theme choice].

Does anyone have any experience of blogs that may suit me better? For instance TUMBLR? It seems as though TUMBLR may suit photos better?

blogspot is the one i currently use http://ukbikeskills.blogspot.com/

I’ve just set up a tumblr site. Still adding content and stuff but it seems very easy to do. Just couldn’t be faffed designing my own site anymore, editing photos to upload etc.

tumblr is shit. not da shit. just “shit”.

IME you’ll also need more HTML/CSS knowledge if you want to style tumblr cf. WordPress and it’s mainly full of skinny angst ridden teens reblogging sub /b/ shite. Oh, and occasionally you will be taken down in the DDOS wars between the aforesaid /b/tards and tumblr

Stick with WordPress – it’s a widely used CMS so WordPress skills may help on your CV. I would imagine most of what you want to do regarding images can be achieved by defining some CSS classes. For instance classes for centred or “hanging caps” positions, whether they are photos or not so have borders or not… and so on

Blogspot is also good though I found it less flexible than WordPress. Haven’t use it since 2005 so it may have got better.

Typepad http://www.typepad.com is another choice but I have no experience on which to recommend or otherwise. Drupal http://www.drupal.org is another popular CMS.

Oh – if you’re uploading images, try the NextGEN Gallery plugin, http://alexrabe.de/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery/. Allows you to upload a bunch of images in a single zip archive. Made my life a whole lot easier than managing an integrated WordPress/Gallery2 site.

I’m using wordpress and initially I found it a PITA for adding photos. I’ve been using NextGEN gallery and I find it really good. I like to add photos in different widths and arrangements and it’s let me do all that. I played with the CSS a little bit to get the colours and stuff I wanted for borders but your theme might do that for you.

If I want to add in a lot of photos in a gallery type thing then NextGEN does that too but I use a different Flickr plugin which I find good as well.

I’d be happy to give you some pointers on how I use it if you wanted to drop me a mail. I’m no expert though! You can see what passes for my blog here:

Basque MTB- News and Views

if you want flexibility get some hosting and use WordPress (.org). WordPress.com is fairly restrictive

Nick, Doug, thanks great tips. The NextGEN gallery is probably just what I am after. Also learning a little bit of code/css is probably needed. Doug, thanks for your offer of tips, I will probably be in touch!
Thanks

blogger – dead easy to use. Some of the standard themes let you just drag and drop photos.

You’ll need your own hosting if you want to use a plugin

Chaps,
I’m quite happy with WordPress and Google Docs, which holds my KML route files generated by Android’s MyTracks app

http://invmtb.wordpress.com/

regards
Shug

Posterous. Or WordPress driven by posterous.

http://www.shedfire.com
http://Shedfire.posterous.com.

Email words and pics. Just does it. Easy.
Posterous also cross posts to twitter and Facebook and WordPress and others. Lovely job.

Posterous is so slow I stopped using it.