GT500.org/hpHosts Mirror Downtime

[GT500]

In case anyone noticed some downtime with GT500.org (I would believe it's still the primary download site for hpHosts in HostsMan), it is back up now. I'm not sure when it started (was fine this morning), and I first noticed this afternoon around 3:00 PM EST. I guess the payment method I had set up had expired (oops) and I had forgotten to change it. Doesn't look like there were any changes made to the server, so the bill was paid in time.

Hopefully there won't be any more disruptions (aside from the normal issues with the switches/routers at the datacenter when someone is being DDoS'ed).

[Aura]

Currently checking out your website, I love it

I'm thinking about starting my own blog as I write a lot of tutorials, videos, etc. but I wouldn't know where to start, haha!

[GT500]

Most people start at a free blogging service, a lot of people also start at Wordpress. I used the My Opera Community blogging service for a long time, but they shut it down. I tend to dislike Wordpress, and found a few alternatives, but nothing that would let me import my old blog (they exported it into an XML format that only Wordpress supports).

My only real complaints about my current blogging solution are that it cannot import that weird XML thing, that all markup is done in HTML instead of some kind of simpler coding system (such as BBCode), and that the comment system is a bit archaic (I seem to have no control over comments that are automatically marked as spam). Aside from that, it's not a bad blog engine. I like the fact that it needs no database, although technically there are problems with that (such as disc access problems when the blog becomes large and popular).

[Aura]

Which blogging software are you using at the moment? Doesn't seems to be specified at the bottom of the website/webpages.

Also, this is what I'm trying to get information on. If I were to over start a blog using Wordpress for free (with wordpress.com), and that one day I decide to get my own hosting and domain, would it be easy to migrate my wordpress.com blog to my new domain and hosting. I always wanted to have a blog, but I need more information before getting into it for real

[GT500]

I'm using Nibbleblog. It has relatively good performance for a blog that saves everything in files, but it does lack a few features. It has a plugin system, but isn't nearly popular enough for there to be plugins for most things I would want to add.

I've never used wordpress.com, so I don't know what sort of export functions they have. I know the Wordpress blog engine has the ability to export blog posts, but that doesn't mean that wordpress.com's blog hosting service has that feature.

I know the former CEO of Opera Software had created a blog/community website to give former My Opera Community members a place to go after Opera Software shut down their blog/community services, and you can get a preview of some of the featured blogs here. Unfortunately, they don't appear to have any sort of feature list, and the FAQ on their forums doesn't mention anything more than that it is possible to change the appearance of your blog via HTML/CSS.