query to the brain trust

[cellio]

My congregation has a writing group and we'd like to be able to share some of our work with each other and anyone else who cares. Our own web site doesn't yet support blogging; I'm told it's coming but not soon. So I want to set up a shared blog or journal somewhere, with posting access restricted to the members and commenting open to everyone. I'm looking for suggestions about where to do this.

Some factors to consider:

• Most group members are minimally proficient with internet tools and concepts; I'm the outlier. So the interface needs to be pretty simple and resilient.
• There will be 10-15 individuals posting to this and I'd like it to be clear who's posting. (I don't want to share one account.)
• There's no money for this. I'm willing to chip in up to about $50 a year, but I can't fund individual accounts for each poster.
• If the site is ad-supported it should be tasteful; I've seen LJ ads recently (when accidentally logged out) and that's just plain obnoxious.
• For this application I don't think threaded comments are a requirement. (I consider them essential for my own journal, but not for this.)
• Syndication (RSS or Atom) is a must, but I assume they all do that. (More specifically, I want to be able to read this blog via LJ.)
• I have a personal aversion to Blogspot because it's very hard for me to post comments there. (OpenID seems to be broken and their captchas are extremely difficult for me.)

I find myself leaning toward Dreamwidth because of the ad-free familiar interface, but I don't know if asking people to create individual accounts would be too much of a burden. Can I have accounts set up there with just names and email addresses and an empty shell of a profile? (Can I do that and just hand out login ID/password pairs to the group members?) And there may well be something much better for this project; I didn't so much shop for a blogging platform as stumble into LJ because of friends. I haven't used the others to publish, only to comment.

Thoughts?

Comments

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

The original LJ code is Open Source, as I recall. That's how Dreadwidth came about. I have no idea of how complex it would be, but: if you can host it, set up your own?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I don't see why you couldn't (just get a pile of invite codes or suchlike) but maybe look over the TOS first?

[siderea]

Can I do that and just hand out login ID/password pairs to the group members?

I don't think so. They're going to need to use their own email accounts to sign up.

I don't think creating accounts is too burdensome, but I may be misremembering.

There's no money for this. I'm willing to chip in up to about $50 a year, but I can't fund individual accounts for each poster.

I think DW is still on the invite code system, however, there was an offer for groups migrating to DW, where they'd provision an entire community with invites. Dunno if they're still doing that.

So I want to set up a shared blog or journal somewhere, with posting access restricted to the members and commenting open to everyone.

Wordpress.com may also meet your needs. More blog-ish. The posting user interface is very powerful, very complex, and very slick. But it may be more than you want your users to have to deal with.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think DW is still on invite codes; let me know if you need some (not sure how many I have currently, but it's at least a handful).

[gingicat]

What about Archive of Our Own, if it's specifically for writing as opposed to blogging?

ps

[magid.livejournal.com]

This from this week's Dreamwidth info:

I've been really excited to see more and more roleplay games starting up on DW, since I think we've got a lot of features that are incredibly helpful for roleplay. (Of course, the true "killer feature" for RP is going to be the main/alternate account system, which is still on the roadmap, fear not.) Since we've been seeing lots of people requesting more invite codes for the purposes of RP, I thought it was about time to mention that we are happy -- eager, even! -- to give out "promo" invite codes: one single code that can be used to create multiple accounts, which can be given out to players so that your game doesn't have to scrounge invites from everywhere in order to make accounts.

If you're starting a game, and need codes for your players, just contact me in the Account Payments support category and let me know:

* The name of your game (this will be used as the name of the code);

* The number of accounts you envision needing (this can be added to later, if you need more; I only need to specify a number at creation);

* The main community for the game, which will be suggested to your players as part of the signup process

This also applies to non-RP communities -- if you've got an existing base of people who are coming over to Dreamwidth to join a community you started, or you're moving a community over wholesale, we're happy to give you out a promo code. It doesn't matter how large or small your community is. (Most of our promo codes are requested for 10-15 accounts to begin with!) We're happy to give out promo codes to anybody who wants to bring a group.