After nearly a decade of contemplating having a blog the last thing I needed was to embark on a year long project to create my own blog software, or to spend forever trying out loads of different blogging tools, or to try and make the perfect knockout blog design. I decided to just do it and resist the temptation to procrastinate.

My first attempt was to fire up iWeb and give that a shot. I chose a simple template, no fancy design, no twitter integration and no witty title. And so I now had my blank canvas on which I could share my intelligent and inspiring thoughts. Pity nothing came to mind. So I did what any good creative would do, I decided to redo my website.

I took a look around at the available blogging services and blogging software. I didn’t want to spend any money (not initially anyway) yet I wanted a service/tool that would provide me with heaps of features and flexibility so that I could create a great looking and functional blog quickly and easily so that I would have no more excuses and every reason to start blogging.

In the end, I decided to give WordPress.com another try. Yep, I’ve been here before many years ago. My account was still active but I never actually set up a blog. I was simply checking out the service. In the end I downloaded and installed the WordPress software and used it for keeping a private blog for a project I did. I think I added a dozen of entries before deciding that a wiki was a better idea. My opinion of Word Press (and WordPress.com) was that I didn’t like it.

So, this time around, I deliberately avoided WordPress. I wanted to see what other options there were (remember, I was trying to avoid doing the hard work of actually writing blog entries). But, in the end I succumbed and created this blog on WordPress.com. My initial impression is positive. It’s improved (as you would hope given the passage of time) in many ways and look at this: I’ve finally managed to start writing blog posts!