Not a proper cybermummy post yet, but one I promised various ppl there, so I’m getting it online quickly ๐
I am sure, once upon a time, I had a post about the relative merits of blogging platforms. Goodness knows that it is something I have expounded on many times in the past 7 (oof!) years of blogging. I started out on blogger, although iirc at the time the choice was rather more limited than it is now. (I think my blog predates wordpress. So that would be why I didn’t choose it in the first place then!)
Most recently, I wrote it up like this for a friend via email:
First question ought to be what do you want to blog for? Personal/ business? May influence your requirements! I’m guessing that most of you that I’ve met at cybermummy are going down the business side of personal route, but you never know!
Blogger, now owned by google, is probably the best known hosted platform. It’s very easy to manage, you have good control over commenting options and plenty of template options for layout. It allows use of javascript for things like webrings and adverts. You can have your blog completely open or private for followers only. You can also have your own domain and have it point at a blogger blog as demonstrated by the very lovely wifeinthenorth ๐
WordPress as is at wordpress.com is hosted for you and again easy to manage with plenty of template options. I don’t think the commenting options are quite as flexible as blogger in terms of what options you can select for ppl to enter, but again you can have an open blog or a private blog, and it also allows for password protected posts or private posts within an otherwise open blog. It doesn’t allow use of javascript so putting webrings and so on on is a little more difficult but can usually be worked around. (There are widgets. Come back to me later if you need more on that.)
WordPress that you download and arrange your own hosting for is about as flexible as it gets, but obviously you’ve got to pay for hosting and then you have responsibility for upgrades and so on. And if it all goes horribly wrong, there can be varying levels of support depending usually on how much you are paying for hosting. Having said that, it is actually very easy to do, and there are hosts which are particularly well set up for it, such as dreamhost.com (I like them so much I’m an affiliate, if you go with them and use my code LIVEOTHERWISE15 you’ll get a $15 discount, although in the interests of full disclosure I get an affiliate payment too) which is a one click install and pretty much a one click upgrade. (ie in the control panel for the hosting is a button which says something along the lines of install wordpress, you press and you’re good to go!)
Given that you can try all three for free (even dreamhost has a free trial, though you will need a domain name to get it to work which isn’t free!) I’d be tempted I suspect to start with blogger and try out the blogging side of it all – it’s very very easy to use. Also you can, as I’ve mentioned, point your own domain at it, and you can migrate off it very easily into a wordpress install as well, if you decide you want more control over your site. The thing that will be fiddly if you’re unfamiliar with websites is getting it to look the way you want, but there are loads of free templates about and it’s fairly easy to tweak colours/ images and so on as you go. (Just remember to take a back up copy of your template before you start!)
If anyone is reading with any specific questions that I haven’t answered, let me know, and there are other blogging platforms such as typepad and so on, but these are the biggies, so I generally start with them – even if I’m theoretically asking questions in the middle of a panel at Cybermummy ๐
Oh, and if you’re wondering just how flexible your own hosted wordpress could be, take a look at movie gazette and Computer troubleshooters suffolk*. These are both wordpress sites (as indeed is this), adapted to differing levels, with plugins and/or customisation, and go to show just how little a site needs to look like a traditional blog. You can do pretty much anything you want within a wordpress environment, including photoblogs and storefronts, although you might end up learning to code php to do it ๐
*If you’re wondering why I chose these sites as demos it’d be because I’m quite close to the developer concerned ๐
Joyce says
Jax, have been told that in order to turn WP into a site, you have to manually strip out the comments capabilities on each page, and it’s very fiddly to do -is that right – doesn’t sound so, but wasn’t confident enough to disagree.
Jax says
I’m 99% sure that’s not right, but I’ll double check with Tim and get back to you as he’s done it very recently. (When you say each page are you referring to using wordpress pages rather than posts?)
Joyce says
Yes, I think so ๐
Jax says
Tim is robustly denying it. You can remove them in the template, so you remove them once and they’re gone.
You can also control them in the settings without going anywhere near the templates, but that might not be quite as clean.
Joyce says
Jax would it be ok if I emailed you later.
Jax says
Joyce, it’s always OK for you to mail me ๐
Merry says
beadmerrily, muddlepuddle and simsgymnastics are all built on wp too – I didn’t have to do much at all. Very simple pimple.
.-= Merry´s last blog ..Co-dependance Day =-.
Rita says
I’ve just set set up a new blog on WP, and my home ed blog is on WP too. I’m the least tech literate person I know, but I’ve managed fairly well on WP. If I can do it, then anyone can!
Baking Mad Mama says
I LOVE WordPress! I started blogging in September last year on a .com site and switched to self hosted a couple of months ago. It was SO much easier than I expected, and the amount of flexibility that self-hosted offers is well worth the often very cheap hosting fee.
.-= Baking Mad Mama´s last blog ..The Gallery- Holidays =-.
Jax says
Definitely with you on that one. Although am slightly irritated at the flexibility tonight when it won’t do quite what I want…