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| What's the best blogging platform for beginners? (photo credit: Petr Kratochvil) |
Whenever someone mentions the term, Blogger and Wordpress would immediately come to mind. I searched the web and could not find an exact definition, so I tried to piece together what several sources tried to say (although not explicitly).
In computer technology, a platform is defined as a framework on which applications can run. A blogging platform appears to be a space on the web that allows blogs to operate.
For your blog to appear on the web, your blog must be hosted. Blogging platforms can either be free-hosted or self-hosted types (meaning you will have to pay on your own for domain hosting).
Considerations
Regardless of the type of blogging platform, all potential bloggers will need to consider a number of variables during the selection process:
Most Popular Blogging Platforms Across Ages
Darren Rowse from ProBlogger conducted a poll sometime in 2006 to find out which blogging platforms most Internet users used. His survey of 1,000 respondents revealed the top 13 as
- WordPress.org
- Blogger
- Movable Type
- ExpressionEngine
- Type Pad
- WordPress.com
- Drupal
- Custom Made
- Text Pattern
- Live Journal
- Mambo
- Nucleus
- b2evolution
Blogging Platforms for Beginners
The choice of experts varies greatly with what newbies would like to experience on their first blog site. So today, while Joomla is becoming the in-thing for seasoned bloggers with an interest in customization, there are still blogging platforms that are easy and entertaining for beginners to enjoy. Parents picked the top 3 as
- Tumblr
- WordPress
- Posterous
Teecup's Take
My personal choice is not on the list -- probably because not many people know about it. I strongly suggest that you try out Weebly as your first blogging platform! The fun factor is out of this world.
I started blogging since 2005 but consider Teecup Limited as my first formal blog site. I was unaware of profiting from blogging then. I blogged (and still do) because I wanted to.
Prior to having Blogger host this blog site, I tried several blogging platforms.
Friendster hosted my first blog, followed by Multiply, Weebly and YouSayToo. I signed up for a WordPress blog at the same time that I opened a Blogger account. WordPress became a white elephant. I had my hands full and didn't have the time to develop a blog with WordPress. I still keep all blogs but decided to be more active with Blogger.
- Friendster and Multiply offer fantastic layouts and customization options, yet both don't give you revenue.
- Weebly has plenty of interactive features, is easy to use and provides convenient Google Adsense help. It gets a 50 percent cut of all your Adsense earnings.
- YouSayToo gives you back 100 percent of Google Adsense earnings and takes care of ads placement. However, YouSayToo leaves little room for creativity and syndicates your content in full. It lacks the customization freedom offered by Friendster, Multiply and Weebly.
- Blogger is Google's official publishing tool and naturally entitles you to the full percentage of ad earnings. The default design templates will get boring after some time, yet you are free to change the look of your blog site by employing user-generated templates.
Reminder: Free-hosted blogging platforms for beginners and across age groups impose different restrictions. Make sure you read the terms before creating an account. In most cases, you are free to sign up and create your own blog only when you are over 13 years old.
