Once you've decided you're ready to start a blog, the biggest (and possibly most difficult) question is which platform you're going to use for it. This post will provide some information about the three largest platforms—Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress—to help you decide.

First, I have several caveats regarding this topic:

• There are more blogging platforms available than just the three I mentioned (e.g. Tumblr, Squarespace, and LiveJournal). I have nothing against any of these—I simply don't know anything about them. I also think if you're not especially technically inclined, you're usually better off sticking with the most popular services because you're more likely to be able to get answers to your questions more easily.
• I'm not an expert on any of the three options I'll be discussing, although I have tried them all out. And some of what I say about them will be based on my perception, which may not always be the full story. So I certainly encourage anyone who disagrees with anything I say to let me know so I can share those other opinions with everyone here.
• Like all things tech, blog features are constantly evolving, so what's true today may not be true tomorrow.
• Whichever platform you end up going with, definitely think about why you're choosing it and be aware of any limitations because it can be a bit of a pain to change platforms at a later date, especially if you've managed to build up a fair number of readers.

Whew! Now that that's all out of the way, here are my thoughts on the three biggies. You might also want to check out this article to get an idea of what the big boys are using: The blog platforms of choice among the top 100 blogs (Pingdom).

Blogger

Note: Blogger and blogspot refer to the same platform. Blogger is the name of the service (now owned by Google), but blogspot is what will appear in your URL, e.g. thecoolestblog.blogspot.com.

I don't know for sure, but I think Blogger was the first blog platform to go mainstream. At least, when I first started reading blogs, it seemed like the majority of them were Blogger ones. Unfortunately, since then, it doesn't seem to have developed into as robust an offering as the other two. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to think of Blogger blogs as being less professional than others (even ones that I know are very well run).

I don't know of any big advantages to Blogger right now. I suspect the fact that they're now owned by Google provides some benefits (for example, I assume it's fairly easy to include Google ads into your blog). However, there are several things I don't like about Blogger that makes it a non-starter for me. These include:

• Most of their blogs have the Blogger Navbar (the blue stripe) at the top.
  
  This reminds me of web hosting services that give you a free page if you have a big banner advertising them, which screams "amateur" to me. (Now, if you're not trying to position your blog as professional, that's really not a problem I guess.) You can hide the navbar, but it involves going into the CSS code, which a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable with.
• They don't have very many templates to choose from, so many Blogger blogs look the same. I'm sure you've seen some of the templates below in the blogs you follow.
  
• Based on some of my friends' experiences, adding widgets (mini-applications that provide extra functionality) isn't particularly easy. I also know a number of people who started blogs on Blogger and eventually moved to a different platform. I don't know all the reasons why, but I don't know many people who've felt the need to move away from the other two platforms.

Again, if there are diehard Blogger supporters out there who want to share why they love using it, I'll be more than happy to update this post with that info.

TypePad

All four of my blogs—long-neglected Embrace Adventure and Life in Squirreldom, never-quite-got-off-the-ground Funny Like a Fox, and this one—are all hosted on TypePad. I don't remember all the reasons I selected it in the first place, but one of the main things I like about it is that I have complete access to all the back-end code so I can customize the design and functionality down to the smallest detail. Of course, that's not really going to be a selling point for people who aren't coders...

However, another advantage of TypePad is that they have a lot of nice predefined themes to choose from in a variety of categories.

Perhaps even more important, they offer a lot of flexibility in terms of customizing the look and layout of each theme, without needing any coding skills at all. For example, every design gives you the choice of having no sidebars, one sidebar (on the left or right), or two sidebars (one on each side, or both on the right). They also offer some interesting layouts for blogs that have a lot of media content, such as photos, videos, etc.

Something else I've really liked about TypePad is their customer support. In addition to having an extensive online knowledge base, they are very responsive when you submit a question to the support team. I've usually gotten an initial response within 24 hours and full resolution within 48. (I haven't actually needed to use support a lot, but it's nice to have when you do need it!)

There is one thing I REALLY don't like about TypePad. In Blogger and WordPress, if someone writes a comment on a blog, they can check a box that sends them an e-mail when additional comments are posted. I use this feature a lot because, if I take the time to comment, I'm usually very interested in the topic and want to know what others are saying about it. TypePad does not have this option. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of the comments in a feed reader, but a lot of people are never going to do that. The e-mail feature has been availalble in Blogger and WordPress for a couple of years already so I have no idea why TypePad refuses to implement it. (It's like LinkedIn refusing to let you search on things based on any geographic criteria other than zip code—I just don't get it...) I definitely think this is a hindrance to creating an active blogging community.

However, the above is not the main reason I'm not recommending TypePad for new bloggers. The main reason is that they don't offer a free option. (They offer a free trial, but unless you're intending to cancel your blog after 14 days, I don't really see that being a big help...). Their cheapest option is $8.95/month, which I think is very steep for someone who doesn't know whether this is something they really want to do or not. And there just aren't enough features over and above what the other platforms provide to justify the cost.

So, that leaves...

WordPress

If I were to start from scratch today, I would go with WordPress, mainly because it seems to have really taken off in popularity and a large community of third-party developers now exists to create widgets, themes, and other features to enhance your blog. I've definitely run into situations where I've found widgets available for WordPress that were not available for TypePad, which, as you can imagine, I find quite frustrating!

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

When it comes to WordPress, it's very important to know the difference between the these two concepts. WordPress.com is like Blogger and TypePad. It's a hosting service, i.e. all the files for your blog live on a WordPress server. So the sentence, "I have a blog on WordPress.com" makes sense.

WordPress.com blogs have a number of limitations, the main one being that you are not allowed to monetize your blog. That means you can't run ads on it (both Blogger and TypePad do allow this). The design choices aren't the greatest either, and they're not very easy to customize because you don't have access to the underlying code.

However, unlike the other two platforms, WordPress gives you the option of installing their application on your own web server for free. (Some services, like Yahoo and Earthlink, have WordPress built into their systems, making it even easier if you already have a web site with them.) If you go this route, you basically have full control of your blog and can access hundreds of other themes for it, as well as add any content and do any custom coding you want to it.

You download the WordPress application files and get support for it from WordPress.org—it doesn't actually store your blog. That's why the sentence "I have a blog on WordPress.org" does not make sense.

This dual option is another reason I like WordPress for newbies. You can start with the hosted version on wordpress.com to get comfortable with how the system works and then, at a later date, if you want to monetize it or give it a more sophisticated design, you can export the files, set them up on your own server, and take it from there. While you may need some professional development help to get it set up, the actual writing and posting of entries is exactly the same, so there's no learning curve for that part of the process.

So, unless you absolutely must have ads on your site from day 1, I'm recommending
WordPress. In tomorrow's post, I'll show you the steps for setting up a basic blog on it. However, if you do plan to go with Blogger or TypePad (or use them now) and have specific questions about them, please send them along and I'll be happy to answer them for you in a separate post.

Posted in Blogging, My Two Cents, Series, Social Media