MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Sometimes, and rather often, I think about starting a blog about different things, including metalworking, microscopy, collecting, etc. However, I can't think of suitable platform. Youtube is obvious choice, however I'm not really into video-making, I'd rather prefer text'n'images, old-fashioned way. Forums seem not very suitable too as my posts simply get lost in vast landscape of other information. So I am asking for advice. I need a platform where more than 2,5 people will see my posts.

You're not alone. I have quite diverse interests so I'm a member at a lot of different places. Some of them cover most of the bases, such as reddit, but the format and design just aren't as suited to discussions quite like a forum.
I don't think there's a place where it could all be hosted so I just maintain with the individual platforms. I'm not entirely sure it being all in one place is desireable, as then if that platform vanishes I'd lose it all.

I do run my own mediawiki server which I use to cross reference and archive papers and other notes. I'm not entirely sure it's an update from my old method, which has been flat text files which I store in git for version control (and subversion before that, and RCS before that, and rsync before that, and....) One nice advantage of the old way is that it's easy to find things with a recursive grep and regex.

Hi, as far as I know blogspot and others are free - but you will not 'own' your content and so will lose it all if you close the account or if the host simply decides to delete it, very unlikely but with a growing blog/website with increasing amounts of content that you will inevitably come to treasure, a paid-for host is probably best...
That said the paid-for hosts such as GoDaddy are about £10 per month for a managed site, with for example the Wordpress website building environment and all the add-ons that are available.

First move is I think to think of, search for and purchase a domain-name for your blog/website. That domain-name may then be hosted by a paid-for service complete with a web-sit building environment - I've use Wordpress and it's really pretty easy and very good.

A paid-for service means that you DO own your content and it can't be randomly controlled even destroyed by a host that's providing the services free...