Blog Platform Overview: in 500 Words Or Less

I did a little informal survey and found the following:

Out of 34 people

68% of you use Blogger

26% of you use Self-Hosted WordPress

6% of you use WordPress.com

and surprisingly, no one responded as using TypePad.

Today I’d like to offer my humble overview and opinion on the top three blog platforms: Blogger, WordPress and TyePad. If you’re in the market, or looking to possibly switch platforms, maybe this little info will help.

Blogger/Blogspot – Blogger offers a free platform that’s very simple to set up. They offer about 38 different pre-designed templates and give you a fair level of flexibility in customizing your own look. The drawback is however, when you gain usability, you loose a bit of flexibility. To make significant layout changes (we’re talking adding navigation bars, pages, or a third column, etc.) you have to know what you’re doing with HTML and CSS (or you could always give me a buzz!). This is a great solution for beginning bloggers because it is free, very user friendly and has the abiliy to grow with you.

WordPress - People are sometimes confused with the two WordPress platforms. First, there is self-hosted WordPress. This means you have purchased a domain name and hosting space to host your blog. Using the open-source (free) awesomeness that is WordPress, you can then create the blog of your dreams. The sky is the limit. The drawback here would be the price and the learning curve. Again, flexibility and usability being on the opposite ends of the spectrum, WordPress weighs heavily on the flexibilty end. If you know what you’re doing, you can create a pretty great (and unique) blog presence.

The “other” WordPress is that hosted by wordpress.com. This is a free hosting platform, still based on the same WordPress program. This is much like Blogger with set templates, although there are some choices between plans that give you some customization ability.

TypePad rounds out the competition and offers, in my opinion, a balance between the two. You pay a monthly subcription for hosting, support and many template options. TypePad is also a good starting point if you like having choices but need some good solid support to back you up.