I get a lot of questions from people just getting into blogging about which blog platform to choose. I have my own preferences and opinions but try to be objective with my answer. I usually point people to my blogging for beginners post on blog platforms for starters – but I’m aware that even that is skewed by my own experiences of blogging.
So – I’d like to be able to give a more independent set of reflections to my readers also and would love for you to share which blogging platform you use and recommend. Here’s a few questions that you might like to answer in comments below (or feel free to write a post about it on your blog and leave the link below so others can find it).
- Which Blog Platform do you Use?
- Why do you use it?
- What do you love about it?
- What do you wish they’d improve?
- What type of blogger would benefit from using it?
I’m looking forward to reading your responses.
* Which Blog Platform do you Use?
Blogger
* Why do you use it?
I googled “blog hosting” and of course it came up since it is part of Google, a company I have great respect for.
* What do you love about it?
Its soooo easy. It does all the book-keeping and archives for me. Its very simple to add images to and the templates are easy to customize and look proffesional, unlike most WP designs, the blogger ones seem very pulled together.
The editing for your posts and settings are easy to navigate. If you need to change something, you never have to click thru 2000000 pages to find the one you need, its very organized and proffesional. You also get better listing with the Google search engine since you are automatically part of Google. You also get a subdomain, not a domain.com/~yoursite. You can even change the subdomain if you want to! Lastly, it isnt overly simple, so I can fool around with the HTML at will.
* What do you wish they’d improve?
I dont have a problem with much, except for the blackouts, but they are almost always scheduled so I dont really have a problem with them.
* What type of blogger would benefit from using it?
I think any blogger would benefit from using Blogger. Its very simple to use, but allows for incredible changes if you can do the coding. Beginners and gurus alike can take advantage of its many benefits.
http://aveganlife.blogspot.com (freely hosted by Blogger)
* Which Blog Platform do you Use?
Wordpress.com
* Why do you use it?
Free wordpress hosting, high search engine rankings from using it, it’s better than blogger :)
* What do you love about it?
I like getting the new WordPress features before everyone else, and being able to provide feedback.
* What do you wish they’d improve?
The lack of javascript support, being able to change your feed address, and CSS being a custom upgrade makes it a less attractive platform for power users. The way themes are done for the multiuser platform are borked. No theme can satisfy all needs for a user… I’d like to see people making less themes and doing more CSS stylings for existing themes — and more focus on making themes like Sandbox that are designed to be solid frameworks for CSS.
* What type of blogger would benefit from using it?
Someone who is not trying to monetize their blog and would rather choose from an existing design than create their own — they just want to put their content on the net with minimal hassles and without having to learn PHP, HTML, CSS, etc.
* Which Blog Platform do you Use?
WordPress
* Why do you use it?
I find it is the easiest to set up and admin. Plus I can use software like rsstoblog and rsbmi with it
* What do you love about it?
The ease of use and compatibility with other blogging tools
* What do you wish they’d improve?
The upgrading procedure, a one click upgrade from the admin would be amazing
* What type of blogger would benefit from using it?
Anyone from a beginner to advanced user
[…] O Darren Rowse desafiou os seus leitores a responder a um questionário sobre a plataforma que estes usam e recomendam para manter um blog, de modo a recolher experiências que possam ser úteis a outros (futuros) bloggers. […]
I use blogger since they started up the beta. I really like how it is intergrated into google and my blog was almost immediately crawled by google. The coding is a little hard at first but I fingured out how to but up a custom banner and add another column. I would recommend it for the ease of use and preference by google. I hear that wordpress is better though for an advanced user.
I use blogger because it was the first one I found that did what I initially wanted, two and a half years ago. Generally happy with it.
I moved to wordpress after having seen that blogger beta could not handle my large blogs properly for some reason (which I simply name ‘blogger beta sucks’ in my blog — I don’t care whether or not the problem persists. I actually thank the blogger team for that accident since it pushed me to consider using wordpress)
If you are a developer/designer kinda guy and you know php to a certain degree, wordpress is an excellent blogging platform to tweak (many wordpress blogs do not even look like a blog).
If you are not one of those (quote unquote) “geek”s, then wordpress has thousands of free templates you can choose (a much large set than blogger’s builtin templates). There are also commercial templates around sold at quite resonable prices.
HTH.
[…] Tendo tomado conhecimento pela Isa, decidi divulgar (e, de certa forma, aderir) à iniciatia de Darren Rowse: Which Blogging Platform Do You Use and Why? — Open Mike. […]
It is in Portuguese, but still might be useful for those able to read it that pass by:
Plataforma de blog: o quê e porquê?
(title translation: “blogging platform: which and why?”)
For the purpose, I dissected both WordPress and LiveJournal — which I use for antipodal kinds of blog.
Which Blog Platform do you Use? – WordPress
Why do you use it? – I have another smaller blog on Blogspot, and I found the system to be a bit of a pain to use for updates. It’s me just being a User Interface Snob. WordPress did attract me for a few things. Aside from Dreamhost having it as a one click install, it also meant it would be on webspace that I had control over, so I had more freedom compared to a Blogspot hosted account.
What do you love about it? – The fact that Ecto works with it…
What do you wish they’d improve? – …Can’t think of anything really…
What type of blogger would benefit from using it? – One that is fed up of using services that are hosted elsewhere to where you want it hosted at.
Qual o motor deste Blogue e Por que?…
Introdução
O Darren Rowse fez uma provocação aos seu leitores para descobrir qual a plataforma que eles usam e por que? Como eu não acompanho o blogue dele, fiquei sabendo graças a esta entrada no blogue do João Craveiro, que descobri graças…
Qual o motor deste Blogue e Por que?…
Introdução
O Darren Rowse fez uma provocação aos seu leitores para descobrir qual a plataforma que eles usam e por que? Como eu não acompanho o blogue dele, fiquei sabendo graças a esta entrada no blogue do João Craveiro, que descobri graças…
I’ve done two sites for clients using Joomla and while the backend is someowhat complex, its really only a matter of remembering where all the various settings are, and learning how to make the pages as you want them. I used to do sites in Dreamweaver, but I may never again, after using Joomla. Blogging is fully supported, and you can make it more than a blog with all manner of pages, all of which can end up in the blog. Timed publishing is built in, and there are litte buttons you can make appear that will link to a generated acrobat file, mailto link, and print link for the article being viewed. There are modules for creating complex forms and all sorts of things.
I was looking over WordPress for my next two projects which will be a fiction blog and a philosophy blog, but now I’m realizing I may really want to stay with Joomla. There are over 1300 extensions, many of which are free, and over a thousand templates/themes, all of which can be edited.
WordPress has a good rep, and some nice templates. In fact, I may mod a joomla template to look like one I found for wordpress. Hmm…
I recent switched to WordPress from a ColdFusion based blog. I use it because it comes highly recommended from SEOs and Bloggers. Also, it seems to be well indexed in the search engines. I love the multitude of plugins to can install to customize the blog. As a n00b to PHP, I am having having to do a fair amount of trail and error for code placement for some of the plugins. I wish the theme code had more comments for where to insert code and where the loop starts and ends. I feel that anyone can benefit from WordPress. The novice and do a one-click install from Dreamhost and be up and running, and the more advanced user can customize the blog to their liking.
My First Impressions of WordPress is my post which I wrote a week ago when I started with WP.
All my site are run on Expression Engine – and all on the same ONE installation of Expression Engine. That is how flexible it is. We h ave 15 or so blogs, and when we need to update the software, we update it once and all sites are upgraded. Multiple user groups with various permissions, and a bunch of plugins, extensions, and modules – this really is the best way to go.
If you got sucked into WordPress just because it’s the first thing you heard of, you may want to branch out a little and try something new. You may just find it to be better ;)
I personally use WordPress on all my blogs (about 5 of them). MPOW uses Movable Type for external blogs and WordPress for internal ones. And I’ve previously tried Textpattern though I didn’t like it much.
One of the main reasons for using WordPress is because it’s FREE. And the other reason is that it is extremely to install and use. Even my colleagues who are not tech-savvy have little problems with using WordPress. But they do have problems with Movable Type.
Like I say, I think everyone (beginner to advanced) can use WordPress and customize it to their liking depending on their level of expertise.
However, I’ve thought of installing either Joomla and/or Drupal just to try them out. :)
[…] Darren Brown starts an Open Mike talk asking the reader about their blogging platform:Which Blogging Platform Do You Use and Why? – Open Mike […]
I use Blogger on my Musings blog http://onaridge.blogspot.com, because I started it two years ago and I was a newbie blogger back then. Recently I started up two blogs in WordPress: http://todaysgizmos.com and http://othersideofnewyork.com, and there was definitely a learning curve there for me. It’s not nearly as intuitive as Blogger BUT it is more powerful. However I prefer the way blogger handles pictures better. I really dislike the way WP does images in posts. You also should be able to have infinite widgets in WP without having to modify the code!
I use blogger but have my own domain. Although I am envious of the bells and whistles on wordpress sites, I simply don’t have the time to learn wordpress and set it up as my site is set up now.
Blogger, while lacking a few features important to me, is extremely easy. I am able to devote all of my time to posting and communicating with my audience.
Christy
For corporate blogging, I don’t believe there’s another platform out on the market that is targeted to the business blogger other than Compendium Blogware. Our application has a minimal interface for the blogger (save, edit, publish) and the system takes care of evaluating the content and aligning it correctly to the appropriate keywords. It also comes with a client success manager who helps you to blog better, target your keywords appropriately, and monitor the actual ROI of your blogging efforts. It’s also built on a robust architecture, even supporting cloudbursting.
Well really so far as it goes I have explored Movable Type, Blogger and WordPress, but have decided to stick with WordPress. Because of the simplicity, the plugins and themes.
I was looking at some of the other options offered here and may have to run the gambit and explore the possible options. I rather something that does not have an immense cost required. So for the time being I am using WordPress because it works well for the basics.
To answer all of the questions – Joomla 1.5, i use it as my blogging platform, made a template myself. I use it for it’s flexibility as it can be just as easily adopted for a small personal blog web as for the large community based website. Once You get to know Joomla there is no turning back.
Although I respect Drupal and WordPress.