When you decide to start your own blog, there are many choices to be made. The very first choice is which platform to use. The most popular blog platforms are Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress. This article will explain the basic differences of these platforms and the pros and cons of each.
When choosing your blog platform, you’ll need to determine whether you would prefer a hosted or non-hosted blog platform. A hosted platform is one that is housed on the platform’s server. In other words, if you have a Blogger blog, your blog is hosted on the Blogger server; if you have a TypePad blog, it’s housed on the TypePad server.
A non-hosted site is a blog that is housed on your own server (usually a third-party you pay to host your site). For example, if you use WordPress.org as your blogging platform, they do not host your blog for you. You will have another company host it. WordPress.org has several companies they work with that will be happy to host your blog.
There are pros and cons to each solution.
The Pros of having a hosted site (like Blogger or TypePad) are
- A hosted site makes it extremely easy for you to start a blog and see if you like it without spending a lot of money up front. In fact, Blogger is free. TypePad offers tiered pricing depending on your needs.
- Hosted sites are generally extremely user-friendly and fairly intuitive (meaning its easy to figure out which link to click to do certain tasks like linking or italicizing text).
- Hosted sites also offer WYSIWIG editors. (WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. Most platforms offer a way to type your blog post and see how it will appear when it’s published. They also offer a tab that allows you to see the HTML of your post if you need to see the code.)
The Cons of having a hosted site are
- Blogger blogs can appear to be less professional. This is a bias in the blogging community, but it is being disproved by several blogs (for example, Scribbit and Mel, A Dramatic Mommy are successful blogs that are both housed on Blogger).
- There are platform limitations. For example, archiving can be less user-friendly; TypePad can have issues with comment spam and trackback spam; and search engine optimization–the way search engines find you–can be difficult because post addresses are generated by the platform and are not intuitive.
- You will generally have less control of your HTML or CSS. Blogger allows you to change various parts of your HTML, but not everything. TypePad allows you to buy an option that gives you access to your CSS, but it is very hard to work with unless you are well-versed in CSS.
- WordPress.com does not allow advertising on your blog.
The pros of having a non-hosted site (via WordPress.org or Movable Type, for example) are
- You have control over how your archives are managed.
- You have control over all of your HTML and CSS.
- You have control over permalinks. This means that instead of the platform choosing the name of a post, you choose a name. This will help not only with managing permalinks, but with managing your SEO (or search engine optimization).
- There are many plug-ins for the WordPress.org platform that allow you to do everything from managing advertising to managing and responding to comments more efficiently.
The cons of having a non-hosted site are
- Moveable Type is not as malleable as WordPress.org.
- You should be more comfortable with HTML, CSS, and PHP in order to tweak your templates.
It is widely regarded in the professional or semi-professional blogosphere that if you have a WordPress.org or Moveable Type blog you are more serious about your blogging. TypePad or WordPress.com are the next tier, and, finally Blogger blogs are low man on the totem pole. However, as I mentioned, many bloggers do very well on Blogger blogs. Blogger is also an excellent choice for beginning bloggers because it is free and easy-to-use. I recommend it for those of you just starting out who aren’t sure if you want to stick with it or not.
More Articles to Help You Choose a Blogging Platform
Although this article gives an overview of what you can expect from each of the main blogging platforms, we have several individual articles that will explain the features of each platform. I suggest reading each of the following articles before making your final decision.
- Using Blogger as Your Blogging Platform
- Choosing TypePad as Your Blogging Platform
- Choosing WordPress.org as Your Blogging Platform
- Choosing Movable Type as Your Blogging Platfrom
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by far the most brief and most useful explanation about blogging platforms I’ve found on the internet yet. Thanks!!
The information about multiblogs in WordPress is not right.
WordPress allows multiblog installation with a single o multiple databases and there are some projects related with multiple blogs. In this link you can find more info: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_Multiple_Blogs.
One of most recommendable projects is WordPressMU: http://mu.wordpress.org/
John,
You’re right. Since this article was written, new upgrades are available. Thanks for pointing that out. WordPress MU has made a big difference in this area. I’ll make the updates now. Thanks!
Melanie
As one who started with blogger I appreciate your candid comments. Recently I have started to use WordPress for the reasons you cited. Better yet I will share your comments with my job networking group to consider starting a blog as one means for landing sooner than later. If you update this post you might consider posterous.com for newbies, just send an email which is an easy way to move into blogging. Or with a phone call which I blogged here; http://bit.ly/Thq5X.
Thanks for your info. I’ve learned a lot from this post.
Thanks for your info. I’ve learned a lot from this post.
I love wordpress, because simple and userfriendly for me
There’s a lot of blogging platforms to choose but for me wordpress and typepad was very easy to use.
Thanks for the post. It’s very essential to learn about the points you’ve made as I’ve seem many who cannot differentiate between a web dev software and a CMS like WordPress.
I use wordpress for blogging and feel really satisfied as its interaction with search engines is concerned.
When we discuss the merits of Free Blog vs Self-hosted Blog you need to determine your goal. Why are you blogging ? If you’re blogging for business and making money, Free Blog is not your best option. On the other hand Self-hosted Blog gives you the opportunities promote your name, and create your brand. With your Self-hosted blog you can do advertising wherever and whatever you want.
When we talk about the blogging platform, just look at the poll results on problogger.net . And you will see WordPress is leading for the last few years.
Although it’s not as popular, posterous is much more efficient.