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Theistic Satanism Blog Network:
The blog hosts we use: A comparison


by Diane Vera



Copyright © 2007, 2010 by Devil's Domain Press. All rights reserved.



The Theistic Satanism Blog Network welcomes blogs on the following hosts:

Sorry, but we cannot include blogs on Myspace, because they do not allow a links list (also known as a "blogroll") on a side panel. (Member blogs are required to put a link back to the main Theistic Satanism Blog Network page on a side panel.) Also, for technical reasons pertaining to a possible future script, we do not include blogs on Yahoo 360.

For those who are interested in participating in the blog network, but who don't already have a blog, below are my thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three blog hosts, plus some miscellaneous tips.

In my opinion, the very best and easiest to use, of the three blogs, is Wordpress. The second-best, in my opinion, is LiveJournal. Your opinion may differ, depending on which of their advantages or disadvantages are most important to you.

Please begin now to experiment with one or more blogs, on one or more of the supported blog hosts. Once you've decided which blog host(s) you'll be using, please let me know the URL of your blog. Whichever blog host you choose, please put a link back to the main Theistic Satanism Blog Network page on a side panel. (Hence you'll also need to choose a layout/theme/template which lets you display a links list, also known as a "blogroll," on a side panel.)


  1. Google/Blogspot
    1. Advantages
    2. Disadvantages
  2. LiveJournal
    1. Advantages
    2. Disadvantages
  3. WordPress.com
    1. Advantages
    2. Disadvantages
  4. If you decide to use more than one blog
  5. Miscellaneous tips on using your blog(s)
    1. Offline editors
    2. More lster
  6. Feedback requested about the three blog hosts


  1. Google/Blogspot

    2.

    1. Advantages of Google/Blogspot

      2.

      1. Lots of people, including lots of Satanists, have Google accounts, e.g. for Gmail. So, Google/Blogspot is probably your best choice if you want to maximize the number of theistic Satanists who can post comments on your blog without having to register for a new account anywhere.

        2. The above assumes that, wherever your blog is hosted, you'll be allowing only registered users to post comments. If you don't restrict comments to registered users, the above advantage of Google/Blogspot is irrelevant. On all three blog hosts, you also have the option of allowing totally anonymous comments. In between these two extremes, Wordpress also allows you the option of not limiting posts to registered users, but requiring users to give you their addresses when they post.

      2. Of the three blog hosts, Google/Blogspot is the only one which, on a free account, lets you change the color scheme of a given layout/theme/template. So, you can choose a template based on factors other than color, then change the colors later. (The other blog hosts let you do this only with paid accounts. With free accounts on the other blog hosts, you still have wide variety of layouts/themes/templates to choose from, with a wide variety of color schemes, but you can't change the color of any given layout/theme/template itself without paying for that privilege.)

      3. "Link back." Whenever a post on another blog links to a post on your blog, a link back to the other post will automatically appear below the comments on your post.

      4. If you also have a Google Ad-Sense account, Blogspot lets you earn a small amount of money from Google ads on your blog. How much money? Not much, alas.

    2. Disadvantages of Google/Blogspot

      3.

      1. When you limit comments to registered users, you are not given the email address of people who post comments. (This is a disadvantage relative to Wordpress.) Nor does Google/Blogspot have provide a means of writing private messages to people who post on your blog (unlike LiveJournal).

      2. I've been told that the WYSIWIG editor is primitive, compared to the WYSIWIG editors on the other blog hosts. (I wouldn't notice this myself, because I'm in the habit of doing my own HTML coding instead of using WYSIWIG editors.)

      3. Fewer features (than Wordpress or LiveJournal) to facilitate social networking amongst likeminded bloggers within Blogspot itself. There's now a "followers" feature, somewhat similar to "Friends" on LiveJournal, but no easy means of finding other bloggers who share your particular interests.

      4. For whatever reason, Blogspot's login page sometimes crashes the browser I usually use (Firefox). But it works fine in Internet Explorer.

      5. No "Recent Comments" widget available. This makes it hard to find recent comments on any but your most recent post.

      6. No equivalent of LiveJournal's "LJ cut" or Wordpress's "More" tag.


  2. LiveJournal

    3.

    1. Advantages of LiveJournal

      2.

      1. Various social networking features. LiveJournal is basically a social networking site, attracting a somewhat more mature and intelligent crowd than Myspace, or at least a crowd that tends to be somewhat more fond of the written word, as distinct from the extremely visual, nonverbal orientation of many Myspace sites.

      2. Some of your posts can be "Friends only," readable only to people on your "Friends" list. Such posts may be useful as a way of having more private discussions with people you've met online, either via our blog network or on LiveJournal itself.

      3. LJ lets you make posts by voice, automatically translated to text. Good for those who would rather talk than type, while still satisfying the Theistic Satanism Blog Network's requirement that blogs be mostly text.

      4. LiveJournal's "LJ cut" (an editing feature) gives you the option of displaying only part of a long post on your front page, asking the reader to click a link to see the rest of the post. This not only results in a less-cluttered front page but also helps raise your blog's search engine rankings, by allowing long posts to be on pages with unique text, rather than displayed in their entirety on a redundant front page.

    2. Disadvantages of LiveJournal

      3.

      1. Very few Satanists there, and even fewer theistic Satanists. (However, LJ might be a good place to meet intelligent people who share your other interests and who are more likely than the average person to be at least tolerant toward theistic Satanists.)

      2. Like other social networking sites, LJ is in some ways a boon to stalkers. (For example, people can see your Friends list.)

      3. No "link back" or anything similar (such as "track back" or "ping back").


  3. WordPress.com

    4.

    1. Advantages of Wordpress.com

      2.

      1. Although WordPress.com is not a social networking site per se, it does have some features that make it easy to find other WordPress bloggers who share your interests. For example, if you click a tag on one of your own posts, you'll be taken to a page listing all recent blog posts, by all WordPress.com users, with that tag.

      2. "Ping back," similar to "link back," but with some differences. Automatically generated links will appear below your post only when the post linking to yours is on another WordPress blog. (Incoming links from the other two blog hosts can be found on your "Dashboard," but not below the linked post itself.)

        3. From a blog post on Wordpress.com, you can generate publicly visible automatic links back to your own post on other people's blogs on either WordPress.com or Google/Blogspot. Thus, WordPress.com is best from the point of view of maximizing your ability to respond to other people's posts via posts of your own, rather than via comments.

        This is a significant advantage from the point of view of protecting your privacy, by reducing the number of people who can see your computer's I.P. address. (On both Wordpress and LiveJournal, bloggers can see the I.P. addresses of people who post comments directly on their blogs. But your computer's IP address cannot be seen via an automatically generated link sent from a Wordpress blog post of yours.)

      3. In addition to the blog itself, WordPress also lets you put up a bunch of static pages, including an "About" page, to which you can link permanently from a side panel.

      4. "Dashboard" includes "Blog Stats," including how many people accessed your blog in a given day, how many people looked at each post, what websites they came from, and/or what search terms they used to find your blog.

      5. Wordpress's "More" tag (an editing feature) gives you the option of displaying only part of a long post on your front page, asking the reader to click a link to see the rest of the post. It is similar to LiveJournal's "LJ cut," though not quite as flexible as the latter.

      6. Probably the easiest-to-use editor, amongst the three blog hosts discussed here.

    2. Disadvantages of Wordpress.com

      3.

      1. Hardly any Satanists there at all, and not very many Pagans or occultists either. However, like LiveJournal, WordPress.com can be a good place to find intelligent people who share your other interests and who are more likely than the average person to be tolerant towards theistic Satanists.

      2. A very annoying "snap previews" feature, but you can easily enough turn that feature off.

      3. WordPress.com serves as a showcase for WordPress.org blog software, hence is frequently updated with the latest version of WordPress's software. In general this is a good thing, i.e. it means that your blog will always be state-of-the-art, but it also entails the occasional sudden appearance of mysterious new bugs.


  4. If you decide to use more than one blog

    5.

    Members of the Theistic Satanism Blog Network may use just one blog if they prefer, or they may use more than one blog, on more than one host. If you decide to use more than one blog, then I would recommend using them for specialized purposes as described below, given their advantages and disadvantages as discussed above.

    I would suggest using a Google/Blogspot blog for most of those posts of yours that are directed solely at theistic Satanists, both to maximize wanted replies and to minimize unwanted replies. Because a Google/Blogspot blog is not already hooked into any larger interconnected blogging community, the only way that most people would be likely to find your Google/Blogspot blog would be via the Theistic Satanism Blog Network's listings of posts. (A few may also find you via search engines.) On the other hand, since many of these people will already have Google accounts, it will be easy for relatively many theistic Satanists to comment.

    On the other hand, because both the WordPress.com and LiveJournal.com sites, especially LiveJournal, are themselves designed to facilitate interaction among members, blogs on these sites are more likely to attract attention from people who aren't theistic Satanists. Hence I would suggest using them for interfaith posts and also for those posts of yours that do not pertain directly to Satanism at all, e.g. posts intended to educate the general public about the religious right wing.

    These are only suggestions, not requirements. It is perfectly okay to use a Wordpress or LiveJournal blog for posts about theistic Satanism, if you prefer not to have a Google/Blogspot blog at all.


  5. Miscellaneous tips on using your blog(s)

    6.

    1. Choosing a layout/theme/template

      2.  Member blogs of the Theistic Satanism blog network are required to put a link back to the main Theistic Satanism Blog Network page on a side panel (or somewhere else such that it will appear on every page of your blog). Hence you'll also need to choose a layout/theme/template which lets you display a links list, also known as a "blogroll," or a layout/theme/template which supports "widgets."

    2. Offline editors

      3.

      It is often handy to be able to compose blog posts offline, rather than always having to use the blog's own online editor. Personally, I usually just hard-code my own HTML using Windows Notepad. But, I'm sure, most other people would prefer something that doesn't require them to know any HTML.

      To that end, there are some offline editors designed specifically for use with blogs. One of these is Windows Live Writer (about which more information can be found here and here). For Apple users, there's MarsEdit (about which see also this page).

      As far as I am aware, these editors work with all three blog hosts. I would appreciate feedback from members of the Theistic Satanism Blog Network.

    3. More later


  6. Feedback requested about the three blog hosts

    7.

    I would be interested to hear others' thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three blog hosts. Feel free to contact me about this.


  7. Joining the Theistic Satanism blog network

    8.

    Once you've decided which blog host(s) you'll be using, please do the following:

    1. Put a link back to the main Theistic Satanism Blog Network page on a side panel. (Hence you'll also need to choose a layout/theme/template which lets you display a links list, also known as a "blogroll," on a side panel.)

    2. If you have not done so already, write a general self-introductory post on your blog, and write a post containing both (1) some of your thoughts about theistic Satanism and (2) a brief sommary of your own personal religious beliefs (if any) or general worldview

    3. Let me know about your blog, including URL's of the above-mentioned posts.



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