Choosing a Blog Platform

Writing by Brick Marketing Staff on Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 11:33 pm

Yesterday, I posted about different types of blogs and different types of content. Today, I’ll write about some of the different blogging platforms you can use to start your blog.

Wordpress, MySpace, Blogger, Movable Type, , LiveJournal, Wordpress.com, Bloglines, Tripod, Squareplace, and TypePad are a few of the choices that are out there.

Some of them are free, like wordpress from wordpress.org, blogging at wordpress.com, blogger, and bloglines. Some you have to pay for, like typepad, tripod, and squareplace. That can affect your decision as well.

All have their pluses and minuses. I’m not a big fan of using any of the free hosts. In other words, blogger, wordpress.com, myspace, etc. Simple reason is that you blog under someone else’s terms of service rather than your own. Terms of services can change without notice. You are not in control. The upside; You don’t need a domain name or hosting.

Tripod and squarespace are only mentioned here out of kindness. Both perform badly compared to any of the other platforms mentioned.

Bloglines is more for you to add your blogs and manage them from there. You can add all your favorite blogs and read them from that website. You can still post there so I did include it even though it wouldn’t be my choice for my blogging platform.

Typepad is very popular. You have to add a plugin to make your blog searchable. Other then that, there is nothing wrong with using typepad at all. It’s small monthly fee is the only real downside for people just starting out.

That brings us to my favorite, wordpress from wordpress.org. I mention it that way because wordpress.com is a free blog host like blogger, at least when it grows up it will be.

Wordpress.org is where you download the wordpress software. It’s free. You need to have your own domain name and hosting, but I recommend that anyway. You control the terms of service on your own domain name.

Wordpress comes with the search function already installed. There are 1000’s of themes to choose from or you can have someone design one for you. It’s easy to administer from the backend. Not a large learning curve at all.

Plus I know that from an seo standpoint, wordpress blogs do very well in the search engines. If your wordpress blog is not performing well, such as not getting search engine saturation, try changing the theme and testing again.

I have found the simpler themes without as much AJAX, javascript, etc. perform better than those with all that extra code.

Anyway, hope that helps. If you know of other blogging platforms worth mentioning, make a comment.

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