What I would suggest actually spending some money and purchasing a domain name and server space (I got my domain name Aceman67.com and server space for just under 50 bucks for a whole year), and then use PHPbb2 plus, which is a heavily modified version of the PHPbb2 system that ships with a Gallery plugin already installed (Among a host of other features)
PHPBBPlus.net :: Portal.
That way you get guaranteed service, you control what you can put on your website, and you can modify it to your hearts content.
Then there are upsides to having your own domain name, one of them being creating your own email address (mines
phill@aceman67.com, and I have it set up so that anything that is sent there gets forwarded to my Gmail account)
But I don't know why you would want to run your own forum anyways... there's a perfectly good one that you're already a member of *cough*animeonline*cough*
As for running a blog, go no farther then just running a Wordpress install (With the NextGen gallery installed), which Is what I use and it works perfectly for what I need.
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