I got my start blogging over at OpenDiary.com. Of course, we didn’t call it blogging there. We called it writing in an online diary. But a lot of us tended to approach our online diaries like we were bloggers. A lot of us eventually created our own blogs somewhere else. Essentially, we had opinions and other thoughts we wanted to share with others, and we enjoyed getting feedback and starting dialogues over what we had to say.

To be honest, online diary sites, and especially OpenDiary, had features that made that a lot easier than it seems to be on more traditional blogs. Those sites were all about community and had tools and features that encouraged interaction between members in the community. There was the constantly updating “Recent Entries” list on the front page that let you know at a glance what your fellow online diarists had said recently. Then there were friend lists where you got a notification when one of your friends posted a new entry. There was also the Reader’s Choice, which was a small listing of people that a certain number of community members thought were worth reading. It was an interesting feature that had all the merits and problems that you’d expect from a system that promoted content based on popular vote, but it was still a way to promote content and encourage interaction.

My favorite feature was Diary Circles, which were pages dedicated to specific topics. When you wrote an entry, you could submit it to be listed in up to three different relevant circles. (It had to be relevant. People who submitted their angel food cake recipe to the Sports circle were shot down pretty fast.) That way, people who were interested in that particular topic could see and read your entry.

All of these things drove dialogue and debate. For the Religion and Spirituality circle — one of my favorite haunts — there was probably more of the latter than the former. Though I did forge some amazing friendships and there was a group of us that loved talking and exploring things together. That group consisted of atheists, Christians, Pagans, and Hindus. Our discussions were fascinating and amazing.

For various reasons, we all left OpenDiary for another site. Eventually we left that site for reasons that motivate me to not even name it. I moved to this site, though I also dabbled with blogs over on Blogger.com. and LiveJournal Other friends moved to LiveJournal, Blogger, Typepad, WordPress.com, or Blogger.com. Some of us are still blogging, though sometimes sporadically. I can’t speak for the others, but I still miss the online diary sites.

Running my own blog on my own hosted site means I don’t get all those fancy community-building features that encourage the same level of interaction and dialogue. It shows in my lack of comments — though there are also things I could probably do to fix that. And even a lot of the sites dedicated to helping you set up a blog seem to suffer. Sure, LiveJournal has LJ Communities and WordPress.Com has search tools to find other hosted blogs with similar interests. But it’s still not the same.

Some days, I would just kill for a Diary Circle or Editor’s Choice feature or one of those other gems that online diary sites were (and presumably are) so good at providing.

So, dear readers, are any of you bloggers or former bloggers? Have you migrated your blogging over the years? Does your current host offer features you didn’t have when you were hosted elsewhere? Or have you lost features you now miss due to a move? In general, how has your blogging experience changed and/or remained the same as time went by?