There are a variety of factors to consider when selecting a web host for your blog, but above all is reliability. No amount of cool features can compensate for downtime. Because of this, I typically recommend using one of the larger hosting companies, as they have the resources and capabilities to maintain the proper equipment and facilities. Options include companies like GoDaddy, BlueHost, and HostGator. I personally have had a good experience with HostGator, and they have a variety of plans available, but any large hosting company is a better bet than small fly-by-night company.
How not to copy and paste
Please do not copy and paste to the blogging app directly from word/onenote/outlook.
When you copy and paste directly from the office apps you get a lot of “formatting” HTML in your post. This causes issues with the CSS (which I admit is a little weak), aggregators, and bandwidth.
I still have some issues to work out with using SgmlReader for the body:xhtml tag, but for the time being, please watch what you post. The biggest problem has been some of the “HTML” posted makes references to a namespace that does not end up being part of the post. So when I convert your HTML post to XHTML (well, sort of, more like XML) your post ends up not being well formed.
(still feel free to use office as your editor, just drop the post into notepad before posting).
BTW, I have been working on a much better blog editor. Anyone know if it is possible to tell “paste” to just keep the carriage returns and drop all of the other style formatting?