I would agree with previous comments that perhaps you were a little quick in what amounted to a disparagement of Blogger. It is woefully inadequate to the needs of established, serious as it were, bloggers but it is very attractive to the non-technical and the newbie precisely because it offers a limited, less confusing, array of options. There is a place for simple, restricted options - clearly so, for the platform remains hugely popular.

And, over time, many Blogger users find ways to customise their sites way beyond what’s offered ‘out of the tin’. For myself, there can only be one option for the foreseeable future - and that’s the full version of WordPress.

The Blogger aspect is a fairly small qualm, though. A great essay overall. x

I use it as a CMS on occasions, mostly for sites that I need to give to tech illiterates to keep updated. Out of preference, I’d use Wordpress, but that’s not always an option. But yes, debugging can be a pain. OTOH, the preview/cancel edits functionality is in many ways better than WP, and you need have no knowledge of PHP to get it working.

LJ as first blogging software? Possibly. Very early, anyway, and still very good for personal stuff. And 6A did indeed invent TB. Their only real breakthrough. Ah well.

I started with LJ, I now use Wordpress. If I was to start again, I’d likely go with wordpress.com or LJ depending on emphasis, and recommend those new to the idea do the same. As a CMS, Wordpress has some limitations, but for a basic package, it’s fine. Wordpress.org is my overall fave, as long as you have access to someone who groks http://FTP. Which I self taught, so it ain’t hard.

* LiveJournal is NOT based on Movable Type - it was around before and bought by SixApart

* SixApart is not the “inventor” of blogging. Although not 100% clear, LiveJournal could arguably take that title. My misunderstanding probably stems from the concept of trackbacks, which SA did invent (I view as one of the underpinnings of modern blogging)

* I didn’t mean to give short shrift to Blogger - you can indeed customize it through the header editor, I just didn’t think that was a very effective (and probably entirely underutilized) way to “customize”. I can’t imaging trying to debug it. Am I missing something?

Blogger is more flexible than you give it credit for, but only if you’re happy to programme html and css yourself, which most won’t be. I learnt a lot using it, but would never go back now.

One amendment needed however: Livejournal (where I started and still use a lot) is NOT powered by MT. LJ was a separate company for 5 years before 6A bought it, and their Open Source platform is completely different and very distinct, in fact a lot of the architecture, especially memcache, is used by sites such as wikipedia and slashdot, and had been for a long time before 6A got their grubby little paws on it.

As it happens, for a company planning an intranet blogging platform, LJ as an installed system might be a VERY good option, not least because it’s free, but also because each post can have completely different security levels. Absolutely no good, currently, for open to the public use though.