I use Blogspot to for my sketchblog. It's pretty basic in some ways, but its entirely free, has plenty of options and does not take a whole bunch of coding on my part to get running. As a result, many of my clients have opted to use it as an easy way for them to have a website and it's worked out nicely all round so far.

Now, however, I'm finding myself less and less inclined to use the service: partially due to the referral spam, the fact Google seems to want to integrate everything into a single account - or at least tie them all together "socially" and, as a visual artist, the lack of display options for me relating to higher resolution art, and a modicum of security in relation to that. As a result, I have not been posting as often (though my life has also been somewhat in the way along with some comissions requiring me to not publish anything outside of certain boundaries).

What I need is a similar free service;

1). Where I don't need a massive amount of coding skill to set it up / tweak it to my liking - there should be base templates that are easily editied without going into code - whether or not I choose to use them (as this may also be a choice down the line for my clients).

2). It should preferably lean towards the display of visual media, but regardless have options for other types of posts.

3). ZERO COSTS!

4). Tumblr is out - hate that service. Have tried wordpress and didnt like the dashboard or "premium enhancements".

5). I also write and would like to see some microblogs that would suit that as a seperate thing (not sites for writers).

Hopefully that makes some sense and someone will have some ideas. I'm really looking at the smaller alternatives to the big names (or at least the big names I'm aware of!).

I actually have to bump a help thread after an hour? So be it!

And just posting from your deviantart account and linking that from popular blog services would not be sufficient?

No, done that for years.

Edit: I'm loking for change / something different from that drudgery!

Diaspora is a bit ugly but does have markdown support, a community that likes art, and Cubbies for posting art/photos... it's the closest free and simple service I can think of though not incredibly art-oriented by any means.

I don't have anything better to suggest and am mostly here hoping someone else suggests something good, as I'd like a nice lightweight blogging service myself.

I would insist with Wordpress, anyway take a look : it's a well-made list of the better services around. [url=https://ghost.org/features/]Ghost.org is an interesting newcomer, for instance, but I am not sure if its hosting service is free.

I know that a friend made a blog on webnode.com but I can't tell you anything about the service as I have never used it, never had any kind of blog and never even seen his blog as they don't interest me. Just thought id give you something to look at that I know has been used for this purpose and they seemed to like it.

Ghost looks quite interesting, so will have to sign up and see what it's like, and the list you've linked also has a few I'm unaware of.
Wordpress I tried - didn't like it at all as it was far too fiddly!

I run a self-hosted instance of Ghost over here, and while it's really fun to blog with (markdown FTW) I haven't really seen any photo friendly themes, especially ones that are free.

I also remember that they opened their own hosted service, but from the email they sent me only the first month is free, after that it's $5/month for 1 blog with a cap of 10,000 views/month.

Despite you not liking Google, when it comes to hosting a visual portfolio I'd honestly swtitch to a Google+ page; they can host high resolution images and the gallery aspect is really good as well as allowing you to add it to posts, so you can basically have your own blog hosted on G+.

No. It's terrible. The policies are terrible. It has nothing at all to offer me.

Shame about Ghost - was looking interesting.

...and heres the problem with wordpress:

On the attached image you see all that it offers you with a free account - yet using blogspot I can add a custom domain if I wish, I still get the free storage, there's no ads, I can customise my design as much or as little as I want. So really, wordpress doesn't offer much in comparison. Is that the social network thing? No good to me really, but cheers!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not tumblr! Not tumblr!

Will check the others though, cheers!

Also checking blog.com - not as user friendly as blogspot, but seems to have most of what I want.

Thanks for the help so far, Trying out a few of them to see how they fit, except I cannot for the life of me get any of these services (out of the ones I've tried) to import the xml from my blogspot so I don't have to make ten test posts to check layout etc.
Any ideas?