What's in a Blog?

[Hazirak]

Long story short, I'm looking to make a blog system. There's a few different reasons ('because I feel like it' is one that comes to mind), but I'm trying to keep this short for those of us with short attention spans.

What I need help on is not so much the coding as the features; what do you expect to see in a blog from a viewer's and an author's perspective, what sort of features do you expect to have, what would you like to have... stuff like that. Feel free to be as detailed as you like, chances are it can only help.

[nexhunter]

for readers, comment and rating system, clean,simple and good looking interface, fast load times,
for author, simple and easy to use wysiwyg post and editor and ability to switch to html source code for embedding objects,
and for all abuse/spam report feature those what i personally would look for in a good blog system

[hartawan]

I agree with nexhunter. what i can add for readers is that the need of easy navigation.. and categorize as well...

[kateblogs]

I agree with the comments above. An easy to use comment system is needed for readers, as well as an intuitive navigation system and an easy to see/use subscription option. For bloggers, a good WYSIWYG text entry tool with the options to add images, videos etc., the options to add/remove/edit certain sections of the blog - like the plugins/widgets in WordPress or the easy theme editor in Blogger - and definitely some way of catching and removing spammy comments before they appear on the blog. Oh, and a spell checker, it took the more popular blogging platforms a while to get the hang of that LOL

[frankfriend]

How do people feel about the need to have some control over the content and postings to a blog? Should it be a complete free for all/ Sadly there are spammers and shysters and other horrors about, so I guess some controls are needed.
What about the 'sealed' blog, open only to members?

Best regards