Happy new year my fellow followers, for the most of us, it
is a brand new year for a brand new start! Let's recap my previous post, in my previous post, we
talked about the differences and the benefits between a sub-domain blog and a
self-hosted domain blog, for those who don't know about it, I suggest you guys
have a look.
So the first and foremost for a beginner in blogging is to
ask yourself, what type of blog you wish to have? Micro-blogging?
Video-blogging? Journal-blogging? For business or start as individual first and
then only switch to business?
Trust me it can be hard to choose at first because there
are a lot of choices and advice from friends, but once you set off and the flow
will keep on coming. I will start this post by listing some blogging services
from free services to paid services with some short-descriptions. (If I miss
out your favorite blogging platform, please let me know too!)
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform and it’s free, WordPress is built not just
a blogging tool but also a content management system (CMS), CMS is a type of
program for easily publish and edit the content, it is more user-friendly, you
did not need to know coding to manage the content (cool stuffs).
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| wordpress.org |
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| wordpress.com |
There are 2 types of WordPress, WordPress.com and
WordPress.org, WordPress.com is for free, it is a subdomain type so there are
some limitation, on the other hand the WordPress.org is for self-hosted user,
you download, install and you can make your own desirable content.
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| blogger.com |
Owned by Google Company, there is huge changes since 2010,
the blogger before that is a little bit hard to navigate, after its big changes
their amount of users is increasing due to added functionalities like Google
analytics and had added a lot of languages and it’s free as well. (P/S: This is a blogger platform if you do not know....)
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| tumblr.com |
Tumblr is free and a micro-blogging site platform owned by
Yahoo Company. Micro-blogging means posting small amount of content in
multimedia such as video links, images, and short sentences. Great for posting
content on the go with mobile phone.
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| drupal.org |
Drupal is more than a blogging platform, it offers simple
websites, an internet forum or a community website for user-generated content.
It is a free blogging platform.
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| opendiary.com |
Open Diary is free and is more on writing if compare to
other blogging platforms, the web layout is not that attractive and the
user-interface is quite ‘unusual’ for me
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| squarespace.com |
This is a paid blog service, as a paid services, it
includes user-friendly customization without any coding experience at all, just
drag-and-drop and mostly a responsive web templates. It is more on a business
blogging type, oh and it also provide hosting services.
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| ning.com |
Ning is a paid service, it owned by Glam Media, Ning is
suitable for people who really wanted to build their own community through web.
It promised to let you control how your blog will be with no limitation.
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| ghost.org |
This is a paid service as well, this blog service is a
newly started project, and it is a Nonprofit Organization. They made their blog
service fully just for blogging purpose, nothing much.
So there you are, some list of blogging platform I
searched through the web, some stop their services such as Posterous, Xanga and
Bebo remain in the process of revamping their whole services. Despites all the
blogging services available here, there are stuff you need to consider:
Posting images and videos – you should be able to
post images and videos in your blog, if you want your blog to look good, you
should be sure that the blogging platform allows you to do so. (Do not worry,
most blogging platform allows images and videos posting, but double check to
make sure.)
Service update – A good blogging platform
will have updates for their services, be it a plugin update, theme update or
back end system update, why? This is to ensure your blog runs the latest web
engine and spam blocking.
Design – People likes nice looking blog, well at least a blog
which has good layout and comfort when reading it, so it is important for a
blogging platform to have several design theme for you to choose based on your
intention, fashion, food, etc. each of them has a look and feel.
Online Advertisement – Does the blogging
platform provide a space for advertisement for you to make some money? Find
that out.
Mobile – Does this blogging
platform allow you to publish and edit the content via mobile phone? Sometimes
you might need it on the go, so it is good to have it too.
Domains – Does the blogging
platform allows you to change the name of your blog URL or URL redirection? If
you start with a paid self-hosted domain then it will not have a problem, what
if you start off as a sub-domain and then interest in changing it to a paid
domain? If a blogging platform cannot change the URL you will be stuck with the
sub-domain name forever.
Technical knowledge – Some blogging platforms
require little or more coding and technical knowledge, so you have to make sure
whether it needs you to learn or not, if yes will it be difficult?
Phew, so I think that’s about all for the basic stuffs
that needs to be consider, (there are still a lot of guide on the web you can
find though) remember the final decision should be made by you and your
likings, I suggest to sign up for a trial for some few posts and take time to
play around the settings provided first only you decide. So until then see you
in next post for the beginner guides.
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