The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series: Choosing a Blogging Platform
The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series Lessons: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8
Lesson Eight:
Choosing a blogging platform can be mind-dizzying. Blogging platforms are everywhere. I’m going to provide a list of recommended platforms, as well as a short list of some of the most popular blogging platforms I don’t recommend. All of these platforms are free to download and install (including the recommended ones), or if you prefer you may have a web designer help you with customization.
I’ve used WordPress, Movable Type, and Typepad extensively, and have dabbled briefly in Blogger, Bravejournal, and Livejournal. WordPress is far and away the best weblog software available. It’s free to download directly into your own website, with your own domain. It comes with great built-in features such as categories, blogrolls, preview, etc, and is highly customizable through plugins and template editors. It supports deeply functional options for comments, calendar, trackbacks, searches, content syndication, and importing from other platforms. Password-protection is available for selected entries, and it has extensions/plugins for photos, podcasting, video blogging, and more. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use, professional blogging platform.
Movable Type, Typepad, and Expression Engine offer many of the same features as WordPress. Find out more about them by visiting each platform’s website.
Recommended Platforms:
Blogger is the most popular full-service (site hosting) blog platform around and is great for a beginning blogger just getting to know whether or not blogging is for them. Due to lack of deep customization and functionality options, it falls far short of what is available in a platform such as WordPress, and even with a custom design, the Blogger banner runs across the top–diminishing professional appearance and style. I don’t recommend any of these platforms for longterm, professional blogging purposes.
Blogging Platforms Not Recommended:
Choose a blogging platform carefully. Invest in design, customization, and installation of a professional blog for longterm functionality and style. You, too, can blog like a pro. Convinced yet? Check out this article on how to choose a WordPress theme and get started!
The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series Lessons: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 -7- 8
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Another great lesson! I love Wordpress too!
I’m obviously biased towards Wordpress. There are tons of great themes out there you can use as is, or modify. It’s a really flexible platform too.