Blog Tips

Alright! You recognized your organisation can benefit from a blog and you know what you will blog about. The next step is critical: Choosing your blog platform, the “software” to edit, publish and host your blog.

Choosing the right blog platform is critical. You might set out as “let me give this a decent try”, but once you made your choice, moving from one blog software service to the other is an absolute drag, as we will cover more in depth further down in this post.

Comparing blog platforms

The most popular blogging platforms are:

• Blogger, owned by Google
• The WordPress duo: WordPress.com (hosted by them) and WordPress.org (selfhosted)
• Tumblr
• The Six Apart duo: Typepad (hosted by them) and Movable Type (selfhosted).
  They also offer the lesser known VOX, a free blogging platform.

Each of the blog platforms has specific pro’s and con’s. It is difficult to find a single article covering an unbiased, comprehensive and objective comparison covering all features, ease of use, flexibility, cost, support and technical limitations.

In this series, we have turned it around: We started from you, the non-profit organisation, narrowing down the options you have, based on the 5 most critical questions you need to ask yourself:

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After reading Part 1 in this series, you will agree with me that selecting the right blog platform, the software you will use to create and maintain your blog, is critical. Which of the four platforms we are considering will it be? WordPress, Tumblr, Typepad – Movable Type or Blogger?

Your right selection will be based on a set of criteria, partially technical, partially functional. In this post, we tackle one issue which is a combination of both: Selfhost or not, that is the question.

“Hosting” is the mechanism to store your blogposts (and eventually also the pictures, videos), and the blog software package.
By “Selfhosting” we mean: you store all data and software on your own server.
“Blog service hosting” is where your blog platform does that for you.

When you start a blog, you have two basic options: Either have the blog service “host” your blog or “selfhost”. This choice will determine which blog platform you can use.

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Part 1 of this series showed how critical it is to choose the blog platform suited for your needs, before you start.
in Part 2, we covered one of the first questions you need to ask yourself: will I selfhost my blog or not?

Today, we’re covering a topic which is just as critical in deciding which blog software to use: “What will you do with your blog?”. Or even better: “What do you want your blog to do for you?”.

Are you OK with a basic functionality, concentrating on posting text, pictures, video? Are simple standard templates and widgets all you want? Or are you looking for more versatile functions?

Let’s go over the different blog platforms we are covering in this series: Tumblr, Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type and WordPress.

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In this series, we looked at the criticality of choosing the right blog platform and how the different blog platforms differ in functionality and in the way they host the blogs.

Now, let’s concentrate more on you, the blogger. Do you want to concentrate on writing posts, without spending too much time on fiddling with layouts, widgets, plug-ins? Or when you want to change some basic features on your blog, do you need to read twenty manuals and follow 15 web development courses?
However you twist it, the ease-of-use is one of the most important selection criteria for a serious blogger.

Let’s look at the different web platforms.

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So far, we have covered some basic questions before you can make a solid choice which blog platform to use: selfhosting your blog or not, what functionality you demand, and what ease of use and support you can expect.

With this triple pack, you can more or less decide on a blog software. Unless…, if you are into serious blogging, and you want your blog to become a piece of pride, a representation of you, or your organisation.
After all, you can write the best content you want, but if you don’t make it attractive and usable, your blog will attract little attention, and few visitors will stick.

This is where the next selection criteria lay:

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