blog installs & customization
The popular blogs are relatively easy to install, and a default install is only $50 for any brand. The list below shares my thoughts on the pros and cons of a few titles.
blog brands
Word Press is very popular blogging software these days, and I use it myself on blogx. Installation as a blog with default or supplied theme from the repository can cost as little as $35. A custom WP theme created from your artwork requires first converting the Photoshop or other image files supplied to valid xHTML and CSS markup, and most designs are about $149 to convert. There are oodles of themes available from Word Press themselves that I can tweak for you, and can install the plugins that are available. Although free WP hosting is available, you will have more control running your own domain and feel free to ask me anything about hosting and web servers in particular or general.
Plus and Minus: Very easy to use software, the wysiwyg editor uses the simple TinyMCE and a large community of support is behind the development of WP. Customization is very easy, fast and for myself, fun to dig into the quality code that makes up the software. It uses the MySQL database and PHP available at reputable hosting providers everywhere.
Movable Type has been around longer than Word Press, and is available for free as well as a commercial and educational licences. By default, MT creates a static html page for faster file serving and is a good choice for heavily trafficked web sites.
b2evolution is the multi-user, multi-language, multi-blog blogging software that is available free with many Cpanel hosting providers using the Fantastico installer. It has a long list of features available, and consequently takes a larger 11.04 MB footprint of disk space.
Free hosted blogs by far are the most simple to use, but they are not free as in freedom to do what you want. If your blog isn't really all that important to you and the risk of having it disappear without notice doesn't matter, then you would save the less than $10 a month it would cost to host with a recommended hosting provider and have me install your own copy of Word Press.