I work as a programmer and could not only handle, but also build a program to handle a blog (although I use Blogger’s :-D).

And I tell you, baking bread is much more fun, satisfying and less time consuming. And there are few things that can go wrong baking bread. At least you are likely to get a bread you can eat, perfect or not. One line of code wrong and you can’t use the program at all.

Although a fun comparison, I can’t really see what they have in common. :-)

The last time I used any of them Jack Bauer was still married, Ian Somerhalder was still stuck on the island–alive and unvamped–and The Village Voice would never have run a 3 page article about a guy who doesn’t have the fucking skill to write a fucking email.

i like the breadmaking analogy.

our household has been making our own bread the past six years. we have kids that can finish a store-bought loaf in one sitting. the homemade stuff is heavy and filling and can last TWO sittings. we calculated that each homemade loaf cost us NZD1.00 to make; an equivalent loaf at a shop would be at least NZD3.50 on special.

and how can this relate to my own self-hosted blog? i like the hands-on-ness of tinkering with the plug-ins, backing-up on a regular basis (thanks HEAPS for that link, by the bye), and avoiding actual writing. i could use Blogger, et al, but they just wouldn’t satisfy my inner control freak.

No. It was a one-reader offer, future dated so that he’ll have to wrestle with dilemma of whether the bread machine is worth it.

• In the >10 years that I’ve been baking my own bread, there has never been someone else that intentionally spoiled it.
• When something fails, it spoils only one bread. Not the whole history.

This is why I still bake my own bread, but would not use my own blog installation.

PS: John, do I qualify for 10 free tracks now?

How long have you been using your breadmaker? Email me back in one year (9/11/10) if you’re still using your breadmaker, and I’ll gift you one track on iTunes.

The better analogy for a breadmaker is iWeb: software on hardware that runs locally and can do a perfectly reasonable job making a blog. And like a breadmaker, everyone gives up on using it after a while.

Yes, stores are sometimes closed. But can you fix your breadmaker if something goes wrong?

That said, for the last two years, my web host has provided, one click backup, upgrade and install options on the back end Web Panel for Wordpress, Joomla and a dozen other content management softwares. Thereby solving for me a lot of the headache and at the same time, allowing me to run a wordpress site, a joomla site, ZenCart, Pligg, Moodle, Gallery, MediaWiki and more. All with one click Backup, and Upgrade features on the back end. Or you can point a domain or subdomain to your blogger/wordpress etc hosted site if things get too heavy.

Moderation rules, Bake your own bread, and buy bread too, they’re not exclusive things.

Wordpress is the breadmaker of blogging software. These days you can even update it with a few clicks – it really is about as simple as breadmaker-baking.

Your metaphor fails on both counts, in my opinion. Shops aren’t always open; hosting services can be too busy for you. Only problem is if you run out of ingredients – but as it’s open source in Wordpress, that’s unlikely.