Opinion columnists may not have views any better than your own, but they have one thing you probably don't—an audience. Fortunately, you don't have to convince J. Jonah Jameson to hire you. A blog can help you disseminate your views, and a hosted blog service can help you get started cheaply and easily. You can write about politics, gardening, your cats—anything you like. Depending on the service, you can post to your blog by browser, e-mail, or even phone. Enthusiastic bloggers can post breaking news before Peter Parker makes the scene.

Blogs are everywhere. Doonesbury's Zipper Harris is a blogger. Howard Dean tracks his presidential campaign in a blog (www.blogforamerica.com). Dan Bricklin, father of the electronic spreadsheet, shares his thoughts in a blog at www.danbricklin.com.

For every celebrity blog, thousands are maintained by ordinary people. Launching a blog is about the simplest way to create a personal Web site. Once you've configured your blog's appearance and characteristic options, you simply start posting. The blog software organizes your posts with the newest at the top and a calendar linking to older posts. You can keep the whole thing private, like an old-fashioned diary, or let a few trusted friends view it. But for most bloggers, the challenge is to attract as many readers as possible, and they let in anyone who stumbles upon their blogs.

Themes or skins let you configure your blog's appearance to reflect your personality; if you know a little HTML, you can do some fine tuning. Many services include interactive elements to keep visitors engaged, like the ability to rate or discuss posts. A search function may help you find bloggers with similar interests. Exchanging links or joining blog rings helps drive traffic to your blog. A few services make it easy to display the books and music that currently interest you, with automatic creation of thumbnails and links to Amazon.com. If you sign up as an Amazon.com Associate, you can even make a little money when visitors click through to buy books or CDs you recommend.

You may well need that extra cash from your Amazon affiliation. A successful blog can outgrow a free or low-cost basic service, forcing you to choose a premium service or even set up your own Web site to host the blog. Some bloggers self-host because of concerns about retaining ownership of their blog entries, though hosting services make it clear that you retain all rights to your posts. But like any Web hosting service, a blog host retains the right to delete content it deems obscene or illegal. And some users may simple enjoy hosting their own.

Scholars today study the famous diary of Samuel Pepys for insight into everyday life in 17th-century England. Will your blog be just as famous in a few hundred years? No one will ever know unless you try. You will have some competition: Pepys's diary is back, as a blog, with annotated copies of the original entries appearing daily (www.pepysdiary.com).

You can choose from an assortment of tools that can host your blog for you; we tested the best of the bunch. In addition, we looked at one application for those who prefer to host their own. Read on to see what we think.

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