Where to blog about science?

[Cosmophile]

Hey, all. I'm looking to start a blog to keep up with my academic progress. I was wondering what medium you guys would recommend for something like this. I'd like it to have LaTeX support similar to what we have here at PF.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I use WordPress for my science blog. My daughter uses it for her blog also. It is friendly, free, and easy to use.

Oh, and it does have LaTeX support. See: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-latex/

 

[jtbell]

WordPress is the 600-pound gorilla of the blogosphere. You can start for free at wordpress.com, under a name like yourname.wordpress.com, but if your resource usage exceeds some limit, you have to switch to one of their paid plans.

Or if you'd rather DIY, you can get your own domain name and buy a web-hosting plan with a single-click WordPress installation procedure from any of a bunch of web-hosting providers. For example, I use Namecheap.com for my domain registrar and web hosting. A .net or .com domain name costs about $11 per year with them, and their entry-level web-hosting plan is about $10 for the first year and $39 for succeeding years. If your blog becomes wildly successful, you'll probably have to upgrade to a more expensive hosting plan, but the entry-level one should work fine for starters. I don't use WordPress (I write all my web page code by hand), but my hosting account's control panel has a button for installing it.

You can use MathJax, the equation processor that PF uses, with WordPress. You need to call a MathJax script on your pages, either by editing your WordPress theme or by installing a plugin. Google for "mathjax and wordpress" for details.

 

[jtbell]

Or if you'd rather DIY, you can get your own domain name

I see someone already owns cosmophile.com, but cosmophile.net is available! Or if you want to try one of the new top-level domains that have been rolling out during the past couple of years, you could go for cosmophile.science. You'd have to pay more for it, though, about $26 per year at Namecheap.

 

[dlgoff]

... if you'd rather DIY, you can get your own domain name and buy a web-hosting plan with a single-click ...

@Borek gave me https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/pf-random-thoughts.338126/page-946#post-4314413 [Broken] way back when. I never bought a domain name but passed on his information so my daughter could set up her site.

BTW Thanks Borek.

 

[jtbell]

Yeah, I've seen the advice to use separate providers for the domain name and the web hosting, so the web-hosting provider can't hold your domain name as a "hostage" in a dispute. You can simply move to another web-hosting provider and point your domain name to it. I probably would have done that, if I hadn't been in a bit of a hurry when I had to move my site after my college discontinued its public server for faculty/staff/students' personal sites. However, Namecheap seems to have a decent reputation in both areas, they've been around for a while, they're independent of the really big companies like GoDaddy that tend to have spotty reputations (e.g. poor customer support), and they're not one of those "kiddie hosts" that are run out of somebody's bedroom.

 

[DennisN]

I would also recommend WordPress.