This session is about Getting started: Choosing a platform, which will be examined by Steve, Byron and Molly.
A blogging engine is software that drives your blog. There are many different varieties that can have numerous admin and user features.
There is a discussion going on about if and how to migrate from one engine to another, say from a free service (like this msn spaces blog) to a more robust solution with more tools.
You want to keep the ability to import and export all your information.
Molly seems to be a big proponent of Blogger which can be both hosted on their servers or on those of your own domain host.
Type Pad, Word Press, Movable Type, there are many different choices of engines to use, but there is no guarantee that any of them will be around next year or even tomorrow. It seems to be extremely important to keep control of your content so that it won’t disappear on you – if your content is important to you.
Enterprise level solutions feature tools from blogging and traditional CMS (content management system) and include those such as Drupal, Marqui and others….