Help me pick a blogger!

[Daxx]

I need to choose some blog software for my wife. I have to get something that is relatively easy to use, but powerful enough that I can manipulate the templates and totally customize the blog to my wife's specifications. I also need to be able to run ads on the blog (don't ask me, ask my wife...), as well as rotating product images. Yes, it's going to be somewhat of a commercialized blog if that helps, but mostly it's just an entry point into a more in-depth forum site (which is going to be my next thread...best forum software!).

Just to name off a couple, my web host has b2evolution and Nucleus pre-installed. I think they also have Typo and Wordpress. But there are a bazillion others out there.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Daxx

[primesuspect]

wordpress is supereasy. I use it for sites I don't feel like paying money for.

if you like to pay for support and get good commercial software, I recommend and use subdreamer.

[profdlp]

...totally customize the blog to my wife's specifications...
I smell trouble here. :-/

I guess it's easier on the back than rearranging the furniture, though... :vimp:

[citrixmeta]

cant go wrong with wordpress, i just love it, it gets better with every version.

you can google and find lots of free templates for it or you can shop around http://www.templatemonster.com/ and pick one for wordpress.

[Daxx]

wordpress is supereasy. I use it for sites I don't feel like paying money for.

if you like to pay for support and get good commercial software, I recommend and use subdreamer.
Actually, I would have to pay to use Wordpress because I need to be able to edit the CSS to customize the templates. But it is not expensive, I just do not like the yearly payment plan. If I load Wordpress on my own server, would I still need to pay to use the CSS option?

Any other blogs out there that anyone would like to recommend? My wifes plan is to have a simple, yet elegant front page blog, write about something, then have it automatically tied to a more powerful forum somehow so people can discuss it. Maybe I am going about this the wrong way.

Here is an example site of what my wife has in mind, and no this is not spam... so I won't hyperlink it.

www dot purseblog dot com (she saw this on the news recently...)

I see they are using vBulletin for the forum but the latest post in the blog always ends up as a forum topic too. And the blog does not have anything to identify it such as blogger or wordpress...

Thanks,
Daxx

[Daxx]

Okay, I think I am going with Wordpress. I've installed it on my host (actually they did that with a plug-in) and downloaded a few templates that I thought would be close to what I wanted. Now I'm hacking away at the CSS and having a blast! The web developer toolbar for Firefox is a BIG help with this and just absolutely ROCKS!!!

I still have a few questions though. How can I get my blog to automatically be started as a forum topic as well, with an automatic link inserted in the blog to "discus this in the forum"? Is there a widget for this? Or is it the other way around such as post in forum and that gets put on the first page of the blog? Is that a forum fuction?

Finally, I need a pretty good (ie hack resistant) forum. Don't mind paying a little money for this, so free or pay is fine. Any suggestions?

update: I see that Short-Media uses vBulletin so I'm guessing that will come highly recommended...lol.

Thanks,
Daxx

[primesuspect]

I highly recommend vbulletin. It's only $160 or so and it is worth it.

[Lincoln]

I see that Short-Media uses vBulletin so I'm guessing that will come highly recommended...lol.
That's true. I also used it for my college's forum, and Brian is using it on newbuddhist.com. Its admin control panel is more advanced than most other products and it's a really solid, well-supported piece of software with a large community developing plugins. It's also fully skin-able, as you see on this site :)