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What Blogging Platform should I use?

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What Blogging Platform should I use?

First of all let me share with you some of the available blogging platforms with you so that you can explore these options.

Here is a short list of available blogging platforms:

Blogger - Claim your free blog here. Blogger is the place where you can create blogs with your google account.

Wordpress.org - is free open source blogging software that is available to anyone to run on their own hosting account. This is the fully featured and heavily customizable version. Wordpress has long been one of the top platforms among bloggers for years. Because it’s open-source, it’s a good choice for those that require the ability to customize everything. There are a plethora of easy to install templates, plugins and other goodies for Wordpress. If you are looking for a free, open-source, fully-featured platform with room for customization and a supportive community of users this may be the best choice for you.

Wordpress.com - is a hosted blog service very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It does not allow the ability to upload plugins or themes, and has some other handicaps, but it’s free, easy and because it’s hosted & free you can get started within minutes.

MovableType is SixApart’s free, perl-based, open source blogging platform. Like Wordpress.org, you download this software and host it on your server. The software is slightly more complicated to install than Wordpress, and comparably customizable with plenty of templates and plugins available from the MT community of developers. Business wishing to get a blog up and running should consider MovableType’s paid services which offer great support and features.

Typepad is the hosted version of Movable Type. Basic pricing starts at $5/mo. Typepad allows customers to set-up a clean, professional blog with ease. There are about 50 available widgets from partner sites, but the downfalls are that it doesn’t allow 3rd party javascript or creation of static pages.

If you want a bigger list, you can check out here for more.

Now let’s talk about if you should go for a free hosted blog or a self-hosted blog. Since I don’t know your position, I am going to share with you pros and cons of both the approaches and then you can decide which one suits you most.

Free-hosted blogs

Pros:

1. Free or very cheap - most hosted options are free except TypePad.
2. easy to set up - most of these types of blogs can be set up with a basic default template within minutes. The set up is usually just a matter of filling in a few fields with your options and choosing a template design.They are ideal if you know nothing or very little about the technological side of blogging.
3. Simple to Run - Once you’re through the easy set up process hosted blogs are usually pretty simple to run. You will obviously need to learn some basics, but these days most blog platforms come with very user friendly features. Posting is as simple as filling in a few fields and hitting publish.
4. Updated Automatically - if the blog platform updates it will automatically do so for you.
5. Indexed in Search Engines Quickly - It takes time to get indexed in the search engine indexes. But because the blogging platforms do have a higher page ranking, it is relatively easy to get indexed here. 

Cons:

1. Less Configurable - If you want to personalize your blog, then you will find the limited options. You will have to live with what the blog hosting company allows for.
2. Less Control - You can’t break their rules. If it says that you can’t monetize your blog, then you can’t do it.
3. Generic URL - You get a standard URL with this scenario. So if you are looking for a sense of professionalism and memorability to a blog, then you should go for self-hosted option.

Self-hosted or Standalone blogs

Pros:

1. Full Control of Design - Depending upon your ability with web design standalone blogs generally are very adaptable. If you are a designer type, then this is the option for you.
2. Adaptability - I like this feature a lot. If you want to add a poll, you can get that plugin and add the poll very easily without making any major change to your blog. This is one of the best features of standalone blogs.
3. Free Platforms - You don’t have to pay for blogging software. You can download from their sites e.g. wordpress and install it on your host.
4. URL - You can use any name and you can brand it in any way.

Cons:

1. Difficult to Set Up - Initially I found it very difficult to understand but as I kept reading about how to install it, it became the second nature. Also there are many products available to make it very easy for you.
2. Cost - While the blog platform itself might be free you need to factor in the ongoing costs of having your own domain name (a yearly fee plus a one off registration fee) and hosting fees (again yearly). There are many great deals out on these so it need not cost the world - although if your blog gets a lot of traffic the costs do go up and you might want to consider going onto a more professional and expensive plan.
3. Updates - Most blog platforms go through different and versions over time. Updating from one to another can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. This again depends if you are using some of the available products which makes installation and updating easy, then you should not have any problems.
4. Hosting Issues - Of course now you have to pay for your own hosting. So this is going to cost you yearly fees. If you are monetizing your blog, then you should plan for recovery of all this cost and over the time to make money from your blog.

When I started blogging, I jumped to self-hosted ones as I wanted to keep the control on my domain name. You can’t have the control on the free-hosted ones. Over the time you learn and start understanding more about the blogging, then it becomes easy for you to take this decision. You can notice from this blog, this is purely to spread the good things about blogging. And I also want to help every one especially new bloggers to start their blogs on the right foot.

Often I recommend that you should start with a free-hosted blog first to get yourself familiarized and then move up to self-hosted blog when you are ready. I love wordpress and that’s what I will be using to show you how to start blogging.

In summary, you should use a self-hosted blog if you want to do blogging seriously and have aspirations for your blog to be at professional level. You might say that you are technically not ready for that but it’s worth spending a little money to get it set up with a designer or even better still, to learn how to do it yourself.

If you just want a blog for fun and to keep a record of your life for your friends and family and you don’t have the time, money or patience to put into it then a hosted option might work well for you too. These blogs are quick to set up and easy to blog.

Other Related Posts:

• What is a blog?

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