Blogging Platforms & Software
Everyone and their dog has a blog, it seems. Blog popularity has boomed in recent years with no apparent slow-down in sight.
Featured Blogging Platforms:
Before choosing a blogging platform, why not check out our list and overviews of the top blogging software to find which is right for your needs.
WordPress has both a hosted service (WordPress.com) and downloadable software to run on your own server (WordPress.org). We’ll cover both of these:
WordPress.org – is free open source blogging software that is available to anyone to run on their own hosting account. This is the fully featured and heavily customizable version.
WordPress has long been one of the top platforms among bloggers for years. Because it’s open-source, it’s a good choice for those that require the ability to customize everything. There are a plethora of easy to install templates, plugins and other goodies for WordPress.
If you are looking for a free, open-source, fully-featured platform with room for customization and a supportive community of users this may be the best choice for you.
WordPress.com – is a hosted blog service very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It does not allow the ability to upload plugins or themes, and has some other handicaps, but it’s free, easy and because it’s hosted & free you can get started within minutes.
Blogger is a free hosted blogging service available from Google.
Compared to WordPress.com’s hosted solution, Blogger has some advantages like being able to modify templates (even the css) and drag-and-drop a variety of modules and third party tools.
Blogger is worth considering as your platform if you are looking for a free & hosted solution with cool features. The ease of Google Adsense integration is another reason many webmasters choose Blogger.
Blogger also gives the option to host your blog at your own Web site by FTPing posts to your site.
MovableType is SixApart’s free, perl-based, open source blogging platform. Like WordPress.org, you download this software and host it on your server.
The software is slightly more complicated to install than WordPress, and comparably customizable with plenty of templates and plugins available from the MT community of developers.
Business wishing to get a blog up and running should consider MovableType’s paid services which offer great support and features.
b2evolution – Is a free & open-source blog platform which you download and install on your own server.
It includes features such as file & photo management, advanced skinning, multiple blogs support and more.
If you are looking for a super-powerful, flexible CMS that can also provide multi-user blog engine — this could be for you. However, bloggers without such needs may find b2evolution too bloated and complicated.
Typepad is the hosted version of Movable Type. Basic pricing starts at $5/mo.
Typepad allows customers to set-up a clean, professional blog with ease. There are about 50 available widgets from partner sites, but the downfalls are that it doesn’t allow 3rd party javascript or creation of static pages.
Domain mapping is available at an additional charge.
Serendipity is worth a mention as a PHP-powered, flexible Blogging/CMS application that you install and run on your own server.
Some features worth mentioning include: BSD-liscenced, easy to use plugins (over 120 of them), and it uses the Smarty templating engine.
Typo runs off Ruby on Rails – if you don’t know what that means, this isn’t the solution for you.
But for Ruby on Rail fans, this is a great choice for blogging software.
Other Blog Platform Reviews:
If you are looking for technical specs on all these platforms and more check out this chart.
Another link of interest: Probloggers "Blog Platform Poll Results"
