Where can I sound off?
While there are many websites that offer premium services (meaning, you pay for added features), there are even more that boast free accounts. Some stay free because they allow pop-ups on their sites, which can be really annoying to your readers. Others put ads on the pages. Depending on how tolerant you are and how much you care about design capabilities, you have more than a few places to choose from. Some have features such as user searches, links to friends' pages, diary locking (readers will need a password to see your journal), or photo hosting, but each should be explored thoroughly before you decide to stay. Here are some of the more popular sites:

• Diaryland : free. Gives you almost complete HTML control in designing your blog, or you can choose from a variety of templates.
  
• Livejournal : free if you're invited by a friend who is already a Livejournal user. (Each member gets one code to pass on to someone else. There are ways to earn more codes, however. These codes limit the amount of new members in an effort to keep the community small and tight-knit.) Premium service optional.
  
• Easyjournal : free (premium service optional). This site does have ads and pop-ups.
  
• Open Diary : free. This site has pop-ups. Also, it is completely anonymous; any personal information written will be deleted. They also crack down on using images from elsewhere on the web.
  
• Xanga : free (premium membership optional). Recently, Xanga partnered up with a non-profit organization for children worth checking out called SHINE .
  
• Salon : free for 30 days, then $39.95. You can also purchase extra space. However, you must download and use their software and run a server from your own computer. Don't be too scared… they claim it's painless, even for the technophobes.