Back in the day, I had a blog on Blog City, a UK-based service. There was a real blogging community in Washington, DC with meet-ups IRL (in real life). There were a number of competing services back then all of whom eventually were under pressure to monetize. When Blog City started to nickel-and-dime its users, I let the blog lapse. I remember that LJ and Blogger were popular; WordPress was the darling of geeks.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/