Choose the Right Blogging Platform

Lately, I’ve received many questions through my contact form to deal with this topic on my blog. Today, I’ll try to help you to choose the right and appropriate blogging platform to blog. Of course, this is not an easy question, because every blogging platform has own advantages and disadvantages, features and options.

On this article, I’d try to help you how to choose a right blog platform and which one is most suitable for you. Depending on your experience and knowledge of course.

Things to Know Before Deciding

Of course, there’re many things you should know even before you start your own blog.

Your Goals and Ambitions

First thing you should know are your actual goals and ambitions for the blog(s) you want to start. What do you expecting to get and what do you want from them? You need to know exact answers to these questions before you go and choose a blogging platform for your blog.

I recommend you to base on the quality – not quantity. It’s always better to post a quality article than plain “copy-paste” from other web site or a blog. That’s the main thing you should know.

Your Budget and Expectations

It’s very important to determine how much do you want to spend on your blog, or are you willing to spend any money for it at all? This may requires several further factors that may affect your decision:

• Experience and Knowledge
• Free or Self (paid) Hosting solution
• Domain Name

Knowledge is Everything

Knowledge and experience can be a crucial factor for you to choose a right blogging platform to blog. If you have never had any experience in creating a blog or website before than you are an absolute beginner, willing to start your own blog and eventually make money from it.

It’s important to know where to start and which blogging platform you choose at beginning. At this stage, the most important thing is to learn “how things work” actually and learn some basics through your work. This is the most important factor – no matter which blogging platform you choose at the beginning.

Paid vs Free Blogging Platforms

I will divide the blogging platforms into two categories: Paid (self-hosted) and Free (free-hosted) blogging platforms or services. I’d list the most popular ways to blog from the internet, since there’re so many other available services too through the net.

Free Hosted Platforms

This is the type that many bloggers start out with. Actually, I’ve started and earned my first online dollars from the free-blogging platform on the internet. Anyway, the most users use this blogging platform because it’s usually free. I also recommend you to try out creating a blog with these services.

Probably the most popular free-hosted platform is Blogger.com (known as blogger.com too) and WordPress.com. Don’t get confused WordPress.com isn’t the same as WordPress.org shown below.

Free Hosted Platforms Pros:

• Free or very cheap to start and run.
• A perfect for the beginners and amateurs to gain experience and knowledge.
• Relatively easy to set-up and edit online.
• Search engines usually index free-hosted blogs faster than other.
• Doesn’t requires any self maintenances and updates.

Free Hosted Platforms Cons:

• Free hosted platforms doesn’t allows you to fully customize your blog. Specially according to SEO and other important factors of the every website or a blog on the internet. Very limited options.
• These blogs also have many limitations according to design. In some cases (Blogger.com), you can design you blog, but much harder and complicated than with paid hosting solutions.
• Most free blog platforms doesn’t give you opportunity to use your domain name (at least for free). Again, blogger.com does support this feature and allows you to attach you domain name for free.
• Transfer to the self-hosted platforms can be complicated and in most cases doesn’t work just right. Since there’re some improvements lately, but not enough for sure.

Self-Hosted Platforms

The other type of blog platform is that which is hosted and maintained by you and your own domain name. You’ll see that this blog is powered by the self-hosted blogging platform – WordPress.org. It’s for sure the most powerful and popular self-hosting platform software on the internet. Most popular blogs and sites use this blogging platform. If you, for some reason don’t like this platform, you can try others like MovableType, ExpressionEngine or B2Evolution

It’s important to know that self-hosted platforms are usually developed under open-source development program.

Self Hosted Platforms Pros:

• Full customization options are included with these platforms. Simply because they’re hosted any edited only by you! You can edit, change or update anything you want – anytime and without any limitations.
• These platforms allows you to download, install and use many third-party plug-ins that can extend their own functionality and productivity like SEO, Links…
• Self Hosted Platforms are highly configurable, allowing you to design themes anyway you like.
• You have a full control over the self hosted blogging platforms giving you opportunity to do anything you want.

Self Hosted Platforms Cons:

• You need to pay to host your blog. Traffic can be limited to your hosting provider, or you’ll need to pay more while your traffic grow. Of course, you’ll need to pay for your own domain name too.
• You fully control your own blog, that means you can make some mistakes on it that can cause you a problems.
• Hosting provider can get you a problems. I’ve had recently the mayor downtime which caused 3x less visits for 2-3 days – just because their mistake. This is not happened with free-hosting platforms.

Conclusions

I hope that I’ve help you to choose your right blogging platform. Also, I think that everything is clear above. If you think a simple, but less effective blog, the choice is a free hosting platform.

In the other hand, if you like to develop a professional blog, the best possible choice would be a self-hosted solution.

Of course, this all depends on your needs, budget and knowledge. I hope that you’ll find the most appropriate and right choice for your blogs.