Terapad: another online option

I have a confession to make. I’m something of a blog nerd. Any time I see a new blogging platform come out, I have to sign up for an account and try it out. I have digital blog detritus strewn around the Internet. I have accounts with MySpace, Xanga, WordPress.com, Blogger, Facebook, and Vox. I have a Drupal installation on my laptop, and I’ve installed Mambo/Joomla previously on my web server. When Movable Type was free (ages ago), I used it for another weblog. I never tried TypePad, because they wanted me to pay. Plus, I have an installation of Wordpress that runs my personal web page.

Now, I don’t actually use most of these blogging platforms. I don’t have that much to say … really! But I like to know how they operate and how they differentiate themselves from one another.

With that as a backdrop, I found another one today that beckoned me like a cool glass of sweet tea on a hot summer day on the Gulf Coast: Terapad. (curse you, Seth Godin!)

From the little bit of poking around I’ve done, Terapad looks to be an interesting entrant into the hosted weblog space. It’s free, and hosts up to 2GB of material for someone who’s using it to run their web site. It has a built in web store (which I didn’t set up) and the ability to perform as a blog platform, or as a static web page platform. It promises to let you have more control of your site’s look and feel than Wordpress, Vox or Blogger.

Here’s a screenshot of the administrative area:

If you’ve used other weblog platforms, then the admin interface may seem a little too complex. It reminds me more of a full-featured CMS than most weblog platforms. It doesn’t have a lot of the social network features that Vox has, so it’s geared toward a different audience.

And here’s the front page for my site, bryanmurley.terapad.com:

There are only a few templates at this time, but with the promise of full customization, you should be able to change those pretty easily. The sign-in process was relatively easy, and the site loads quickly.

Why do I point this out? Because it’s another option for a college news site that wants to get online easily (see earlier post: Get online TODAY!). I have to confess that Terapad is a little late into the game for me to use it with frequency. I’ve got too many blogs as it is. But it’s definitely got potential. And it’s another tip that the window for good excuses not to be online is closing.

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