A free blogging platform running on WordPress that is popular but surprisingly failed to take off in a big way like Blogger is Blogsome. Before jumping on the wagon of a self hosting my own blog, I had my initial “training” on using WordPress with Blogsome.
Blogsome runs on WordPress with the original source code modified. On the surface, it looks exactly and works exactly like Wordpres, but internally, it has some difference. The beauty of using Blogsome is we are given access to the 4 most important files namely the Stylesheet and the Main Indes files. The other 2 files we are given a free rein over are the comments php and Posts php, which is the Singles php we see in WordPress. We can modify them if we know how, but the best thing is we can insert Ads at our own free will as appose to WordPress.com.
There haven’t been much change after all these years. I don’t think there have been any upgrade either and it is still running on WordPress 1.5, However, it is as stable as it can be and during the one year that I was blogging on Blogsome, there was not a single minute of downtime though it could slow down to a snail space sometimes.
I took the opportunity to check on the Themes available, but there was no new inclusions since I left with the exception of only one. All the rest are Themes that were released in 2004. There are, however some third party developers who has modded some nice one to suit Blogsome. You will find them if you Google for them. Upgrading the theme is done manually like Blogger. You copy all the files and paste them into Blogsome one by one.
A much discussed issue is the plugins. Blogsome has included some popular plugins by default which you can choose to activate or otherwise, but makes no provision for users to download extra plugins. If anyone wants a specified plugin, they can request for it in the Forums, but it will never be entertained. Can’t blame them though, if every user starts downloading their own plugins, then I think Blogsome’s server will crash!
It is a perfect starting place for people who has never blogged in WordPress before to familiarize themselves with this platform. It gives newbies a chance to grope around without fear of messing up with anything. The most damage you can do is mess up the 4 files and your blog won’t load, but there are options to back them up before tinkering.
