Is your organization ready for a web presence? Are you on a shoestring budget with not much in the way of technical expertise to draw on? You might consider getting on the web using a free-of-charge blogging site….

But I don’t want a blog! I don’t even know what a blog is!

“Blogs” - the shortened form of the term Weblogs were originally for an eclectic group of web geeks who wanted to keep journals on the web. But, now they are so much more! Using blogging software, such as Wordpress affords one the ease of a simple content management system which makes it easy to keep your site up to date. Using a service such as Blogger or Wordpress.com offers the added benefit of many predefined layouts which can be used “asis” or modified to add your own images, etc.

John Freund is a real fan of Blogger - http://www.blogger.com. The interface is simple to use. The cost is non-existent. And they offer a choice of professionally designed templates to get you started. You can have multiple authors on a blog. If you get brave you can doctor the template to personalize it more.

I am more of the Wordpress.com camp, probably because I deal with Wordpress on a regular basis. Wordpress has developed into more than a blogging platform. The English language Famvin.org is built on a combination of Wordpress and Mediawiki. This allows us to do our editing online from anywhere we might find ourselves - as long as we have internet access.

There are other inexpensive possiblities as well:

Typepad is built on the foundation of MovableType. The entry level is $4.95/mo USD - but you can try it for 30 days before you buy in. This site runs was originally built on an older release of Movable Type.

A couple of spots to look into for this type of website include:

• Wordpress.com
• www.blogger.com
• Typepad - charges a monthly fee, 14 day free trial
• LiveJournal