In 2014 blogging is growing day by day. It’s gaining popularity with each passing day. And I’m very happy for that, there’s never been a better time to blog. There are many platforms that allow people to start a blog without spending a penny and you don’t need to be a developer or designer to have your own website. You need to register and that’s all.
In this article I’d like to present you 5 blogging platforms you may want to try for creating your own blog. I hope this article will make more people interested in blogging and will help you choose one of few similar platforms.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. Tumblr has a strong community of users, much like Twitter or Facebook, thanks to the ease in which other users’ content can be reblogged to your Tumblr account. This month Tumblr counted more than 197.3 million different blogs. It’s very popular because it allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. I put Tumblr in the first place with Medium. Both platforms are best for beginners.
Tumblr advantages:
- Users can follow other users blogs;
- Easy to upload media (music, video, pictures);
- Tumblr supports custom domain names;
- Easy to use from mobile;
- Easy blog theme customization via mobile app.
Tumblr disadvantages:
- Tumblr requires you to use the Tumblr platform and servers to host your blog;
- Tumblr requires users to reach the age of 13 before using the service;
- Anonymous users can send bloggers hate mail and threats without any accountability.
Medium
Medium is a blog-publishing platform. It was founded by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone in August 2012. The platform has evolved into a hybrid of non-professional contributions and professional, paid contributions, an example of social journalism. This platform has an extra feature to annotate work of other people, this makes this new blogging platform quite unique. If you are new to blogging and want to get started, then you might want to try Medium.
Medium advantages:
- A great place to showcase your content to a large audience;
- There is an app for mobile (only for reading);
- Very easy to use;
- Easy to sign up, just use Twitter;
- Users can follow other users.
Medium disadvantages:
- Lack of customization and some content discovery issues for writers;
- There is no direct way to contact users.
Blogger
Blogger is a blog publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was acquired by Google in 2003. Blogger blogs can be customized with new backgrounds and layouts easily. Unsurprisingly, the platform is hardwired into Google’s AdSense advertising program.
Blogger advantages:
- Easy to use and get started;
- Powered by Google, so if you have a Gmail account, you already have a Blogger account;
- Design runs off HTML and CSS, easy to customize.
Blogger disadvantages:
- Most of the templates aren’t aesthetically appealing;
- Limited image storage space;
- Blogger may automatically resize photos into much smaller dimensions;
- Only 1 GB storage;
- You don’t own the blog.
Wordpress
Wordpress is a weblog hosting provider owned by Automattic which opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It is powered by the open source WordPress software. More than 60% of websites in the world are built on WordPress. The WordPress community is big. We’re talking thousands of designers and developers, thousands of writers, and millions of users, all contributing to pushing WordPress forward.
Wordpress advantages:
- It’s very easy to setup;
- Reliable service since it’s hosted by WordPress.com itself;
- It’s free for up to 3GB of space;
- You don’t have to worry about maintenance, updates, spam and security;
- WordPress make regular backups of your site.
Wordpress disadvantages:
- They place ads on all free websites;
- You are NOT allowed to sell ads on your site unless you receive 25,000 pageviews per month;
- You cannot use plugins;
- You cannot use custom themes;
- You are restricted to their analytics;
- They can delete your site at anytime if they think it violates their Terms of Service.
Svbtle
Svbtle is a writing and reading network designed from the ground up to work the same way your brain does. Svbtle is blogging with everything else taken away. Svbtle was initially available on an invite-only basis when this blogging guide was first published, but the service later opened up to all users in January 2014.
Svbtle advantages:
- Beautifully designed;
- Supports custom domains;
- Responsive and a great mobile layout.
Svbtle disadvantages:
- There is no commenting system;
- Lack of capabilities to arrange articles according to categories;
- Requires tags/pagination.
Conclusion
If you are new to blogging and just want to try it out I suggest you to use Medium or Tumblr. These two platforms are best options for “rookie” blogger. It’s incredibly easy to get started.
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