i7o Media

This is a guest post from Joel Carl. If you’re interested in writing an article for this blog, feel free to use the contact form. You will be linked to appropriately.

Before you even write your first word on a blog, it is important to carefully choose a blogging platform. I’m talking about platforms such as wordpress, blogger, typepad, blogsmith etc.

You may choose a free option now, but what happens in the future when your blog grows? What happens when it turns into a recognisable brand and you now need to migrate to a new platform and perhaps your own hosting?

There are tools available which can make this transition more manageable, but this is something that you should look to avoid. If you have grand plans for your blog and you can see yourself blogging long term, then it is smart to carve out the details now, get yourself set up with your own hosting and a suitable platform. You may have initial costs of domain registration and hosting, but the costs will be much higher if you choose to migrate at a later date, not to mention the frustration if you aren’t tech savvy.

Platform Features
The best thing about blogs is that most blogging software makes it ridiculously easy to create and publish content. If you have limited knowledge of HTML, look for a platform with a WYSIWYG editor – this will make it even easier!

Blogging Platforms
Wordpress(.org) – is the most popular blogging platform to date. Because of the immense popularity, wordpress has thousands and thousands of developers creating useful plugins and themes – many of which are free. Wordpress is free to download and once installed on your hosting, it is 100% modifiable. Infact, you can turn a wordpress blog into anything.

I have even created squeeze pages and sales letters from the wordpress platform, you wouldnt even recognise it – sure they aren’t blogs in the traditional sense, but whenever I make a small update – out go the pings, twitter updates, RSS etc. My competitors with boring old html pages, have no idea how I smash them in the google rankings. Wordpress truly is a great piece of software and it’s here to stay.

Wordpress(.com) – dont confuse this with wordpress.org! This is a blog hosted on the wordpress site. Suitable for those who dont have hosting. The domain will be h.ttp://yoursite.wordpress.com

This is fine if you are not 100% committed to your blog and you just want to have some fun. Since it is hosted on wordpress servers, you have less control over things such as plugins, customization and themes.

On top of that, if you eventually decide you want your own domain and hosting, you can not 301 redirect your pages to your new address because wordpress has control over the servers. This is the biggest problem I can see with free solutions. However, at the end of the day, free is free and it’s always hard to beat.  It all depends on your situation.

Blogger – a free blogging platform from Google. Bloggers are given a subdomain – h.ttp://yoursite.blogspot.com. Blogger is really not that great. You have even less control than wordpress.com, for example you don’t have full control over the meta tags unless you can modify the code. A good indicator is that only 3 out of the official top 100 bloggers use blogger.

Blogger has also become popular for spammy purposes so it’s reputation and ranking is dropping. Look elsewhere.

MovableType – a highly professional platform featuring numerous weblogs, making it especially user-friendly for those who have several blogs to manage. All the templates, tagging, user interface and file management are customizable.

The biggest advantage of movabletype is the Perl-Based functionality offering the same, if not more features than wordpress. MySQL, Postgres, SQLite and Berkeley DB and supported. Pages can be created to be static or dynamic – a great feature which I will explain more later.

MovableType is Popular amongst professional bloggers

Typepad – this is the hosted version of MovableType, no hosting required here. You have to pay for this though – around $5 a month for basic version which allows 1 blog. Packages go all the way up to $90 a month.

Here is the biggest problem – it once again involves 301 directs. If you start with a h.ttp://yoursite.typepad.com instead of your own domain, you wont be able to map your URL to your domain IF you eventually choose to get your own domain name. This functionality is possible but it is included in a more expensive package. If you start with your own domain name, you WILL be able to implement 301 permanant redirects to a new host and platform if you choose to relocate.

Also important to note – link value is forfeited if you ever make the switch.

Other popular platforms include Blogsmith, Gawker, Expression Engine and Drupal.

Most Important: Before you rush out and choose a blogging platform, ask yourself the following questions:

- What are your goals? Can you see yourself committing to this blog? Is it personal or for your company?

- What’s your budget? Can you afford to pay for domain names and hosting? Do you have funds to have a custom design made?

- How tech savvy are you? If something goes wrong with the tech-side of things, can you fix it? Or will you need to pay someone to fix that buggy blog software you chose?

Answer these questions and you should get some sort of idea on what blogging platform you should employ.