Posted by Fox on July 31, 2007 at 1:56 PM

I'm looking at alternative hosted blog services for a series of articles on The UK Bloggers Guide. I've started with a free blog using blog.co.uk  - You can see my test blog at http://ukbloggersguide.blog.co.uk

Getting Started with a Free Blog at blog.co.uk
Really quick sign up process. It only took me about 10 minutes to go from signing up to seeing my first post appear, which is impressive. Now, I'll bother taking you through the steps of signing up because in the time it takes you read them you can get over to blog.co.uk and have your blog up and running.

Templates, Design and Layout
So immediately after making my first post, I decided to change the look of the blog using their templates. They have a nice selection of good looking and functional layouts. Changing your template was a two click, 1 minute process. One click to save your preferred choice and another to activate it.

A Social Network of Bloggers
In addition to providing you with a free blog, blog.co.uk is also a very active social network.

This is worth noting, because within 4 minutes (I shit you not!) someone replied to my first post!

Here's my first post, and here's the comment posted by another blog.co.uk user calling themselves mermaidstale. I'm not making this up, 4 minutes. from no blog, to a blog with a comment. That's impressive.

The home page of blog.co.uk lists new users, new blogs, recent posts and featured blogs. I can only assume that mermaidstale saw my post featured on the front page. I'm guessing the post will have be bumped off the featured list within 5 minutes.

First Impressions?
Very easy and very impressive. I'm going to have a play around with the features for a while. I'll keep you you posted.