I have blogged on some of my past trips. The longest one was for about month. I use Blogger - a Google product. It is not hard to use and free. However I do not think it offers all the features as Word Press, etc...
If your friend just wants to have a go to place for friends and family to check in and follow along - Blogger will work fine. If they have aspirations of being a travel writer they probably should go with a more capable platform.
Here are a couple of mine:
Virtually Visiting Vienna Anguilla eXcellent Adventure
