Blogging Platforms
There are many ways to write a blog. Many social websites (e.g. myspace, yahoo360) offer a blog feature on their site. While these included features are great they are lacking in the fact that they do not really let you feature your work but rather as a facet of your social connections.
Rather than go through the extensive list of blogging platforms and review each I’m going to give you an idea of what to look for.
The biggest question to start with is if you are going to have a Hosted or Self-Hosted blog. This question is usually overlooked as many will just use what they know and that is often a Hosted solution.
Blogger and Wordpress.com are examples of of a hosted solution. While they have great features for your blogging needs they are often restrictive in your use of advertising and customization(i.e. plugins and themes) The benefits of a hosted solution is that you pretty much only have to write blog posts and not worry about anything else. The negative is that you can limit your creative and earning capabilities. If you’re just starting out, not technically savvy and don’t have an existing website, a hosted solution may be the best way to go.
A self-hosted solution is not without it’s pitfalls. In addition to paying hosting fees (usually a little less than $10 a month) you can get stuck with installing and supporting your blogging technology. Many out of the box solutions are simple enough to setup and modify but if something goes wrong you could be in over your head in a minute. The benefits are that you can customize your blog to your hearts content. Personally I prefer wordpress.org
When selecting your platform make sure that it will work with what you want to do. Check on things like:
- Advertising - Do you have to host ads for them and can you put your own ads up.
- Themes - What kinds of styles and layouts do they offer
- SEO - Check on how well can you manange your search engine optimization
- Add Ons - What kinds of add-ons or plugins do they have.
- Publishing options - In addition to a web interface are there other ways to publish(i.e. email, text message)
- Multimedia - what kinds of files can you upload and how much.
- Users Management - Can you have multiple authors/editors for your blog.
- Moderation - Can you moderate comments and posts on the blog
- Syndication - All blogs should have an RSS feed but do they provide ways to push that feed out or do you have to subscribe to them
While this is not a complete list it can be a good starting point for selecting a blog. Many will have a free version if they don’t have a trial. Test it out and take it around the block before you invest a lot of time and effort into your blog only to find out the platform you chose doesn’t fit YOU!