Blogging is one of the hottest trends on the planet right now when it comes to the web, and with that comes over 6,520,000 search results if you’re “googling” your way to find the best platform. In my search I evaluated a few different popular ones and they are:
- WordPress – www.wordpress.org
- Tumblr – www.tumblr.com/
- Blogger – www.blogger.com
Needless to say my tastes may be different than yours, but in any case lets take a look at what I found.
When I talk about WordPress in this review I am referring to WordPress.org and NOT WordPress.com. WordPress.org is the version you install on your own hosted server. This platform allows maximum customization and comes with thousands of free and premium themes. In addition to downloading or purchasing themes you can also create your own if your handy in PHP, CSS, and HTML and more. Wordpress.org has reported that over 60 million people use their platform, and I am one of them as you can see! WordPress has hands down the best developer and community support and has the biggest list of plug-ins and widgets by far. WordPress isn’t just used as a blog these days. Most professional sites are built upon the WordPress platform to create a plethora of corporate, small business, personal, and eCommerce sites. Unlike Blogger and Tumblr, this platform normally costs for hosting, and then purchasing a domain name, however you can normally get your foot in the door for under 15.00 a year with a host like GoDaddy or BlueHost. To read more about the differences in the most popular blogging platforms visit DearBlogger.
The next service on our list is Blogger! Blogger is Google’s free blog hosting and all it takes to get started unlike WordPress is a Google / Gmail account. Blogger was a big hit back in the early 2000’s but has fell down the ladder a bit due to their designs lacking appeal. One blog described it as having “childish like themes”. Blogger makes getting started into the blogging stratosphere very easy, and if you’re like me (a google fanatic) and love the Google eco-system then you can’t go wrong. This is the platform that most big tech writers started on, then eventually moving to WordPress. Bloggers customization comes in 2nd in my opinion to WordPress, but ahead of tumblr. You can use templates or even re-write the HTML and CSS to design your own. For more information to decide if Blogger is right for you visit DigitalTrends.
Last but not least is Yahoo’s tumblr. Tumblr is dubbed the choice for those heavy into music, video, and photography. This platform like the previous Blogger is easy to set up and use, and just requires an email address to get started. Tumblr lacks in in the customization that WordPress has, but you can still buy premium themes if you desire and of course standard free themes are available as well. Tumblr like the Blogger will give you a url suffix such as myblog.blogger.com or myblog.tumblr.com at the end. However you can remove these restrictions by purchasing the right to do so around 10 – 15 dollars a year. To find a more in depth list of pros and cons between tumblr and WordPress you can visit http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/editorial/wordpress-vs-tumblr
In the end the choice is yours but my choice is WordPress due to its amazing customization, support, and ability to scale far and above just a normal blog.