Taiwanese blog hosts

Life Technology
1

My Taiwanese sister-in-law wants to set up a blog or web site with pictures of her travels and captions/commentary in Chinese.

We were wondering if anybody had any positive/negative experiences with any Taiwanese blog hosts like these:
www.wretch.cc
blog.xuite.net


blog.pchome.com.tw
spaces.msn.com

We can read Chinese, so we know what those sites say about themselves. What we would like to know, is how they actually rate in practice; are they efficient or unreliable, do they provide enough space for pix, are they user-friendly, etc.
Thanks.

2

She can register at bloger.com/tw

3

Anything will support Chinese. You want use of use and elegance. You might check out what’s now considered the best of the blog software:

Blogger
Typepad
WordPress

There are others; I think these are now the most popular. Google the 3 and you’ll find lots of comparison reading.

4

Here

5

Very true MuffinGirl. :slight_smile:

One look and it does seem the Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress are the easiest to use. :slight_smile: There’s something to be said about non-Chinese blogs.

Maybe you’ve met a few Chinese people? Maybe there’s a 1 in a million that has a creative bone in their body. :slight_smile: Not their fault, they have a history they have not yet grown out of. So far, there haven’t been too many creative Chinese. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, some chinese painters, writers, poets, artists, Zhang Yimou. There are some who have discovered the wonder of the world or felt enough opression that they needed to dedicate their life to overcoming.

Though the west has it’s own problems. For the last few hundred years, education has kinda taken a bad turn and we don’t quite think for ourselves like we used to.

Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress are significantly more easier to use.

Blogging is very social. Using a Taiwanese site will get much more Taiwanese notice. If she wants the world to notice, an interesting, easy to use, elegant, beautifully crafted site will get attention anywhere.

By using the best blog sites ever, you can do stuff like email blogs (probably), or use real software like Ecto with OS X or Windows.

If use a Mac, there’s easier blog software like MacJournal.

If your friend has some design and tech skills, or wants to learn, she could take blog software like MovableType or WordPress and create a custom look or change it to do exactly what she wants.

Check out the Bloggies weblog awards. There are some very nice designed blogs; and some interesting reads in the Asian category.

6

I used to use Yahoo! for my photos, but I was very disappointed when the ‘free’ service cut some of the options that I found very useful for photo management:

FTP upload (for lots of photos)
see full size photos,
security of images

Yahoo also removed access to the original images online, which maddened me, but must have p***d off a lot of people.
*removed ftp access
*removed online access to viewing the original size images, too.

Since I now have my own website and hosting (not through Yahoo!), I’ve been much happier. I can control a lot of aspects, true. It is more trouble, since I have to think about the set up more, but then I can avoid all the other issues above!

I would submit that other photo websites also could circumscribe users in similar ways that you might find annoying, esp. if you don’t keep the original fotos somewhere else.

my 2c worth.
Kenneth

7

[quote=“gary”]Very true MuffinGirl. :slight_smile:

One look and it does seem the Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress are the easiest to use. :slight_smile: There’s something to be said about non-Chinese blogs.

Maybe you’ve met a few Chinese people? Maybe there’s a 1 in a million that has a creative bone in their body. :slight_smile: Not their fault, they have a history they have not yet grown out of. So far, there haven’t been too many creative Chinese. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, some Chinese painters, writers, poets, artists, Zhang Yimou. There are some who have discovered the wonder of the world or felt enough opression that they needed to dedicate their life to overcoming.
[/quote]

I can’t agree with you saying that there are few Chinese creatives - if that’d what you are saying.

The problem is not a lack of great artists or designers in Taiwan, the problem is that few apply these skills to quality interface design. None of my peers here treat screen design with the same respect that they do for industrial design, print, or their art. For some reason Taiwan is incredibly far behind countries like the US in this regard. Services like wretch and so many online applications (and websites in general) in Taiwan suck because so little effort is spent making it actually work for people.

Typepad, Blogger, and Moveabletype suck less - go with them.

8

[quote=“enzo+”]We were wondering if anybody had any positive/negative experiences with any Taiwanese blog hosts like these:
…
spaces.msn.com
[/quote]

In this thread, forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 610#511610
I tried to show someone how to hotlink to a pic (on spaces.msn) to put it in their post, but it failed. Does anyone know if hotlinking is disabled by default? Is there a specific amount of garbage attached to the end of the URL which one needs to delete first, as in Flickr? Is the only remedy to repost the pic via something like Flickr or ImageShack?