Start Blogging - Choosing A Blogging Tool
Jan 2008 | Category: Make Money Blogging
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taken from the originating source.
What should you think of first when you want to start blogging? Choosing a domain name? Or a hosting service? It would be wise to first determining your budget for blogging setup and promoting. Then you can go from there to look for information regarding domain prices and hosting packages. If your budget covers all the cost for a certain period, the next step is of course, choosing a self hosted blogging platform suits you.
Otherwise, if you’re not so budgeted, there’s still an option many people also use. A free-hosted blogging platform. Indeed, they have limitations compared to self-hosted blog engines, but it’s always better being a runner up if we can’t make it to the first. A free one can also be used to test a blog for a period of time.
Now, for a start, let’s see what Blogger has to offer:
Blogger is free and millions of bloggers are using its service. It offers easy setup and you can start blogging in ten minutes due to its simplicity! Blogger also integrates itself with the Audioblogger service. You can record yourself and then put the recordings on your blog easily by programming the Audioblogger number to your phone and then calling the number. You can also have access to make changes to your page (CSS and others).
You can also buy your own domain name and then direct it to your Blogger blog so people won’t know that you’re using Blogger. This can save your hosting budget since all you need is to buy a domain name. But if you choose to use Blogger’s default URL, it’s going to be “yourblogname.blogspot.com”. Blogger bloggers 
are able to submit their posts through email. You can have each of your post embed with a unique email address and you can email your uploads.
Blogging under Blogger’s service can also get your blog listed on Google very fast. This is because it’s under the same roof with Google. However, I think it’s only an added value since getting indexed on Google isn’t so difficult. Another thing they offer is you can find and browse other blogs from their topbar.
Unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t provide an easy way to arrange your posts into a category. You’ll going to have to find your own way to group your posts. People usually make special links to featured posts or posting posts under the same category for each month.
You also need to work on your changes every time you do a template change. To overcome this issue, you can copy paste your changes from the old theme to the new one.
The next free blogging platform is, WordPress:
WordPress provides each platform for a free hosted and a stand alone blog. Although it is free, it supplies many features usually offered in paid platforms. Among those features there are blogtats, static pages and categories. Static pages are like posts except they live outside of the normal blog chronology and can be hierarchical. So they will always shows up and their displays are not dependent on how much your posts are. While categories covers the need to well…categorizing posts, in order to make them easier to be found. This helps visitor in navigating your blog.
Then, there’s an akismet spam protection. It’s use is to delete spam messages automatically so you don’t have to. This will be helpful when your blog grows older and become more known since many people want a share of your famous page.
Nobody’s perfect, as well as man made programs. You cannot edit your CSS page and all, leaving them just as they are. But to compensate, there are tons of user friendly themes to try.
Here are more information and comparison about free hosted blogging platforms
Wordpress.com vs Blogger.com
Pros and Cons of Free Hosted and Stand Alone Blogging Platforms
Well, those are the two blogging tools you can try if you choose a free hosting. Now there are more options if you prefer a self hosted blog.
taken from the originating source.
WordPress
I like WordPress - because it is what I am used to. WordPress uses the the PHP scripting language and MySQL database - both of which I have used for years at work and at play. WordPress has a lot of plugins, some of which are really really good (and some that don’t work at all or get in one another’s way).
It may be that you are migrating from WordPress.com and are already familiar with the basic operation of WordPress - and this can be a good reason to stay with it (although it must be said that self-hosted WordPress - sometimes called multi-user or MU - is different to the wordpress.com version in several ways). You can download it for free from wordpress.org.
PS: If you’re thinking about setting up a social network around your blog, keep an eye on the BuddyPress project. It isn’t Facebook, but it will allow you to set up some similar functionality.
Movable Type
Movable Type is popular - I’ve used it myself, but gave it up because I found it easier to do what I wanted in WordPress. Donna uses Movable Type as do several other famous bloggers - and some heavy-traffic sites like Boing Boing and Treehugger. You can run multiple blogs from the one control panel, which is handy, and Movable Type has a personal edition that is free. There are also Enterprise and Community editions (and the Community edition contains some of the same functionality available right now as promised in the future with WordPress MU with BuddyPress).
Drupal and other community CMS
I’d have to say that Drupal is the easiest way I know to set up a social community site in a hurry. It is a real web content management system (CMS). The default installation is fairly low-tech out of the box - it has a blog option, but it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles straight out of the box. The wiki option is much the same.
The exciting thing is that Drupal (and Plone, and many other community CMS) can be configured to work as well as one of the multi-user versions of Movable Type (but without the license fee). Examples include The Rake Magazine, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Warner Bros Records, and the New York Observer - all full-on commercial websites.
Quick BlogCast
Quick BlogCast gets you up and blogging quickly - it is a cheap hosting add-on to some domain reselling packages. It is not as configurable as WordPress MU or Movable Type, but it is worth considering if you need a blog in a hurry on your own domain name.
Recent comparison resources are a little thin on the ground
Basically, there aren’t a lot of comparison resources around - most of the people who write about one blog platform over another are either commercial vendors, developer groups or user-fans - or the reviews are years old. Here’s what a bit of googling turned up:
- Wikipedia has a list of different blog publishing systems, but it isn’t very useful for making a comparison.
- Darren Rowse wrote a good post that is much like this one, but considers the free options like blogspot as well.
- Asymptomatic has a comparison chart but it is way out of date.
- SitePoint has a review that is also out of date.
- Online Journalism Review has one that is around 18 months old.
If you want to find out about blog platforms, it is probably just a matter of research, research, research.
Other considerations
It has to be said that there are other considerations.
- One big one is ease of installation - for example, some hosting providers have a set of one-click applications that take, well, one click to install. The hosting setup has scripts that take care of the hassle for you (like knowing the name, username, and password to your database server). If you are unsure, it is easier to go with the blogging platform that is on your hosting provider’s one-click list.
- Another is technical support - if you have a friend who is an experienced user of Movable Type (and they are willing to help you) then this is worth considering as an extra tick against that platform.
taken from the originating source.
How about you? If you’ve been using a certain blog platform for a period of time, what is the feature you like most? Are you planning to convert your platform in the mean time? Maybe you have other blogging platform recommendations?
After you’ve chosen your platform and set up your blog, make sure you do these tips to make a perfect first steps!
Technorati Tags: home business,home biz,blogging platform,blog platform,hosted blogging,start blogging
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I thought I’d read some of this before: http://facibus.com/onblogging/2007/11/28/get-a-real-blog-finding-the-right-blogging-platform/
Write your own content next time
You did, Donna! That’s why I also include a citation saying where the post was taken from. Look for the phrase “taken from the originating source”.
It’s in the mid of the content. I guess I’ll need to put it on the top and bottom too..
Ah, I didn’t spot that at all.