Recommendations for a good blog website/software?

Dear Experts,

I'm thinking of a new blog.

Before, I've blogged on a few different websites, but
this time around I thought I'd first ask
for a few recommendations.

My list of requirements follows.

I'd prefer to not have to host it myself.

What do the more experienced bloggers recommend?

Thanks a lot!

----

Blog Website - Requirements

Statcounter Analytics:
Must be one of the blog websites/software listed at:
https://statcounter.com/install-guides/

Other Analytics
- Website (ie, Wordpress stats, Google stats)
- Flagcounter

Quick and easy to use:
Upload a prepared post in 10 minutes max!

Ability to change the theme

Change font for a sentence in 10 seconds
- Highlight, Change font, get on with your life

Plug In, Widget functionality
- Flag counter
- Twitter
- search the blog

Upload PDF files, so they can be downloaded by users

Insert pictures, graphics

Insert Table/spreadsheet onto the blog, and/or

Access the HTML Code to create tables

Contact form

Comment functionality

Ability to approve, delete comments

SEO
Hopefully, blog posts found via internet search easily enough

Ideally free

No big brother censorship

Perhaps can monetize the blog

 

would say WordPress the best option for you reason 33% of the world's websites and bloggers use WordPress it's also free has tons of free plug-ins and themes

 

Actually, on my blog, now, nothing is free on Wordpress anymore.
Just to add a widget, I'm suddenly supposed to pay
When everything was free before for 10 years
Surprise!
Does anyone else have any ideas?
Thanks

 

here our more free options hope this helps

Pubvana Open Blog is now Pubvana. Pubvana is a re-brand of Open Blog v3. Built to be the easiest, most intuitive CMS to use for personal blogging & websites and small business websites.

Serendipity is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain an online diary, weblog or even a complete homepage. While the default package is designed for the casual blogger, Serendipity offers a flexible, expandable and easy-to-use framework with the power for professional applications.

Dotclear is an open-source web publishing software created in 2002 by Olivier Meunier. A one man's project at first, Dotclear soon gathered a team comprising different personalities with various backgrounds. The project's purpose is to provide a user-friendly tool allowing anyone to publish on the web, regardless of their technical skills.

b2evolution is an advanced weblog tool, i-e software allowing you to run your own blogs, newsfeeds or even photo stream. b2evolution is a medium scale CMS centered around the Blog concept, fully featured with multiple blogs, content/presentation separation, full user management, full internationalization (i18n), workflow management... and extending towards features normally provided by Wikis, Trackers or hierarchy driven CMSes.

Textpattern is a web application designed to help overcome the hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages. Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system. It is both free and open source.

Nibbleblog Easy, fast and free CMS Blog The database used is based on XML files and this way it is not necessary to use MySQL or similar DBMS.

LifeType supports multiple blogs and users, media management, generation of standard content, clean URLs and support for subdomains.

Pixie is a free, open source web application that will help quickly create your own website. Many people refer to this type of software as a "content management system (cms)", we prefer to call it as Small, Simple, Site Maker.

Nucleus CMS is a flexible and easy to install content management system, aka blog software. It helps you to publish a website and lets writers do what they are best at: writing items or articles, without having to worry about formatting and markup.

Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is powered by PHP and has very powerful theme and extension engines, so you can personalize it however you want. The code is well-documented, and it has a very strong structure that's loosely based on the MVC design pattern.

eggBlog is the free php & mysql blog software package, allowing you to create your own online website, journal or weblog (blog) using your own web-space.

HTMLy is an open source Databaseless Blogging Platform or Flat-File Blog prioritizes simplicity and speed written in PHP. HTMLy can be referred to as Flat-File CMS either since it will also manage your content. HTMLy uses a unique algorithm to find or list any content based on date, category, tag, or author, and the performance will remain fast even if we have thousands of posts and hundreds of tags.

PivotX is free software to help you maintain dynamic sites such as weblogs, online journals and other frequently updated websites in general. It's written in PHP and uses MySQL or flat files as a database. PivotX is also a great tool to maintain more complex websites as well. Its powerful core and flexible template system make it easy for developers to adjust and extend. Whether you want an easy-to-use, robust blogging tool or are looking to push things to the max - PivotX offers the best of both worlds.

FlatPress is a blogging engine that saves your posts as simple text files. Forget about SQL! You just need some PHP.

Leafpub is an open source blogging platform with inline editing, handlebar templates, and a beautiful user interface. Introducing the first open source publishing platform to feature a true WYSIWYG editor. Say goodbye to boring forms and rich-text controls. Say hello to inline editing.

 

Wordpress is FREE to use. There are a truckload of free themes and plugins you can add on it. With a cheap hosting account you can run your project without hitches for years. I have used a lot of scripts in the past (before wordpress) and it was a hassle to keep on re-learning all the stuff, as soon as the platform would go bust and not be supported anymore. Wordpress works great most of the time and you can run a website with almost no budget, just like you can get bespoke themes and plugins for a pretty buck

 

There are plenty of free WordPress themes and plugins you can use.

 

See the picture.

To add a plug in, I now get:
Upgrade to the Business plan to install plugins.

I can still make posts,
but I can't add a plug in anymore.

Unless I pay Wordpress for at least a year.

I hope this is clear

BTW, whether WP is free or not, is NOT the subject/question

The question was/is, what's a good alternative to Wordpress?

 

Thanks to dts-net for the long yet concise response.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Again, I'd like to work with Statcounter, and so
use one of the sites used here:

https://statcounter.com/install-guides/

Thanks again

 

Just use WordPress like the millions of other people - it's the most popular CMS/blog platform for a reason.