Recommend me some blogging software

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m helping my friend redo her website as a blog format. Any suggestions on blogging software? I take it that Moveable Type and Wordpress are the two big contenders, although I’ll certainly consider other suggestions. Some considerations:

  1. Free would be nice. Are MT and WP really free? Or are there “pro features” at an added cost?

  2. Technical expertise - I managed to set up mediawiki software on a computer once, so I imagine with good instructions I could manage if I have to, but ease of use would really be nice. We already have our own host. I’ll be working from a mac. How does ease of use compare, for installation, customization, and adding content?

  3. Redirect links - there are a few pages from her old site that she’d like to still work. Is it difficult to have those old links (there’s not many so it could be done manually) redirect to their new location?

  4. Themes - She has a fairly specific theme in mind. Is it easy to customize the look?

  5. Forums - Her old site has forums. Should we:
    A) Use forums that are built into blogging software? Is there such a thing? How does it rate?
    B) Just use the old forums and link to it?
    C) Link to the forums but pick a different forum software? What do you suggest? How hard is it to modify the theme of forums?

  6. Non chronological pages - We want to do a few pages (sort of like stickys here I guess) that aren’t blog entries, like FAQ, ABOUT, etc.

2

I should specify that this would be something I’m installing on her server, not something that would go on a general blogging site.

3

One vote for Wordpress.

It’s very flexible, has thousands of plugins available, and can be used by someone who has very little computer techie knowledge. It is based on MySql; all text is stored in database tables.

There are thousands of predesigned themes available for Wordpress, though with some effort and a bit of CSS knowledge, one can make a theme of their own. Of course, there are folks out there for hire that can make one for you.

I was looking for something very simple and clean, and Apricot was my choice (I put my own image in place of the “Apricot” wording at the top).

I would recommend using a hosted server. This is different from a “general blogging site”.
I find it very convenient that I have an account on a Linux box somewhere out there in the ether that has PHP, MySql, and Wordpress installed. I pay a few bucks a month for this, but I don’t need to worry about the hardware at all.

4

Have only really ever used LiveJournal and Wordpress.

Wordpress seems to be well liked and popular. I have no complaints myself.