Selecting a blog platform – Part 6: Customizability
To make a solid choice which blog platform to use, we looked at factors like selfhosting your blog or not, what functionality you demand, ease of use and support as well as design, layout and navigation features.
Some bloggers are very particular about their tools, and want it just the way they like it, in looks and functionality. How do the different popular blog platforms compare on that criteria? How flexible are each of the software packages we looked at?
Tumblr
Tumblr’s template is a free-for-all playground, which you can customize all you want. The negative thing is the lack of features as part of their core functionality, so you can not do much more than tweak the layout.
Blogger
Blogger is highly customizable for those who have the technical knowledge. Over the past 20 months, I hacked my way through my personal blog’s template and what I have nowadays does not resemble the original anymore.
The way Blogger opened up its template for customizations, and documented the features is definitively a plus. On top of that, Blogger allows you to do whatever you want in HTML, Java scripting or CSS within widgets and posts. But… you need the technical know-how.
WordPress
You can recognize a WordPress.com blog – the hosted version of the WordPress twins – from afar. They feature more widgets and plug-ins than Blogger but they still… look pretty standard. Customization, unless if you pay extra for that privilege, is pretty much out of the question.
Not so for its bigger -and selfhosted- brother, WordPress.org, which allows you to do anything you want. And with the active user community being one of the strong points of the WordPress family, you can turn your blog into the look and feel of a professional website.
A few third-party providers of WordPress themes have protected their code so that certain portions are encrypted and cannot be modified, though this is rarer these days.
Typepad
… offers just as much customization as WordPress.org, with the same level of complexity. The two are about even here. Co-author Dave sets up blogs for a living and notes it is almost never necessary to modify the Typepad templates. Typepad also offers simple CSS customizations.
Movable Type
Selfhosted Movable Type offers just as much customization as WordPress.org, but is a little more bothersome due to the complexity of the underlying template architecture.
Concluding:
I recommend to go for Blogger only if you want to experiment.
Go for Movable Type or WordPress.org if you want to tweak your blog as you would do with a professional Content Management System (CMS), and if you have the knowledge. Even if you don’t, the out-of-the-box features are diverse and well-supported.
WordPress.com is the runner-up with a lot of features built-in, but with less customizability.
Tumblr offers you room to customize, but with only few featured building blocks.
Writing this series, I got significant help from Dave Barnhart, who filled in the blanks on Typepad and Movable Type.
Dave is a social media strategy consultant, founder of Business Blogging Pros, and a gourmet chef. He and his firm have been helping companies use social media since 2005.
He blogs at Business Blogging Pros and Fumbling Foodie. Check out some of the blogs he has created.
Follow me
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
The first comment… comes from me.
Blogs are the new ‘corporate website’… I am not sure there is space for both. In theory, there is, but if well done, a blog can ‘exterminate’ a corporate website.
J.
Excellent post, thanks!
I am still trying to convince the public information people that blogs are GOOD! I will forward them this post!
My web guys will have a real go at this post!
It would also be interesting to see some graphs over period of time.. How they evolved as the blog got “to be known”…
Thanks, Lucy… Think this is a good idea!
Peter
We must not keep quite at this moment. The situation in Iran is getting worse by the minute. The events happening in Iran are really sad. I really hope that Iran’s people get back there freedom of speech and democracy.
I’m very happy to see that bloggers all over the world are blogging about this issue to raise awareness. Twitter is also doing a great job.
Iranian people, we are with you.
Thanks for explaining clearly about twitter. Keep posting.
Nice posting. Actually I am trying to increase visitor of my blog. So this article help me lot.
You are doing a good work here may the good Lord continue to grant you good health.
Please am interested to learn how to blog,please me,www.twitter.com/worldcupza
WOW,You’ve tons of good article in your site man….but i wonder why there is no ads on your blog?
You must have at least few right?
If I would blog for money, I would have gone broke or mad a long time ago.
I only have a few text-link ads at the bottom left sidebar.
Peter
Thanks to admin, great posting
very thankful tips i found about tweeting, thanks
There’s a lot of interesting information in that report. It sounds like they really did some homework to come up with those numbers.
“8. Write when there is something you know, and not before”
Totally disagree with that one. Some of the best writing is born from doubt.
Hacking became easy now
everybody are trying to hack something they want.
Thank you for posting this. As a Technotard it is information like this that helps me learn and understand the complexities of Blogging. Keep up the good work.
Microsoft Bing would be the closet competitor of Google. but i still use Google because it shows more relevant results on the serp.
great information,Good post there mate.
Nice post I like reading the reviews
Blogging Tips
I love wordpress myself, and cannot seem to get into any other platform!
i have been evaluating the search results of Microsoft Bing compared to Google and they are comparable. Bing gives almost the same relevant search results just like Google.
I’ve used Wordpress.com, Blogger and Movable Type. Of all of them, Wordpress is definitely the most fun to use.
However, there is one benefit to using Blogger than many of the other sites don’t have: They let you earn money from advertising.
I know this is a non-profit blog, but earning money is one of the reasons I stick with blogger when I want to create a free website.
But I believe a Wordpress.org site hosted on a rented server can be altered to earn an income. Not 100% sure though.
Nonetheless, very good tips you have here.
@Jacob,
Thanks for your comments.
Indeed, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress – on a rented server as you describe it) does not allow advertising.
WordPress.org (the selfhosted version) allows you to do anything, so do Tumblr, Typepad, Movable Type (and Blogger of course).
Peter
Bing search engine gives almost the same search results as Google. Looks like Google will now have a tough competition when it comes to search engine technology.
Good article. perhaps we can lok forward to some videos in the future?
@TwitterTricks:
if only I had time!
P.
wow, wonderful images. it is great to see. i think it is photoshoped, but it’s amazing .
no photoshop. just basic cropping and highlighting contrast…
Peter
No offense or anything, but your site is filled with many things that kind of slow down the loading. Just a friendly hint:
Too many widgets and pictures=Too few viewers
@ATP
If it were you, where would you suggest to make changes?
Is it slow at your end? Over here the home page is 0.5 Mbyte and loads in 6 seconds flat. There are no widgets whatsoever. All images should be cached.
tnx–Peter
@ATP..
oops sorry. there is a widget… The only widget there is, is the ‘Related posts’ at the bottom of each single post…
P.
Here’s an article helping to explain PageRank if anyone is interested in reading more into it.
Tracking your site is really important ,if you want to know your sources people linking to you +You get new ideas by tracking your site so you start building new source.
Sincerely,
Adeel
Age 16
Along with great details, what I like about Google analytics is the simplicity
Blogs are an easy way of earning cash as well as traffic to your site only if done in a tactful way
http://tinyurl.com/y9lr3le
Bing does give search results much like Google but i would have to say that Google still gives more relevant search results
Great article. Very helpful information. Thankyou.
Great tips! Now what about pinging your blog and blog posts? I’ve had my blog Journey to Independence for quite a while now and would like to know how pinging my blog posts will do me any good. I read a lot of tips on how to ping and what plug-ins one can use but none of them that says what the exact benefits of pinging is.
Andy,
This would be an interesting topic to write a post about.
Apart from the advantage of pinging search engines/aggregators, the blog-to-blog pinging seems only a mechanism to “network socially amongst bloggers”:
If blog A pings blog B, this means nothing more than B advising A of an update moreso “reminding of its existence”…
I think the only real (and honest) use of blog-to-blog pinging is as WordPress has implemented it (maybe others too, but am the most familiar with WordPress’ implementation):
for each post, I can automatically (and manually) ping other URLs to advise them I have referred to them in a link, within my post.
As a ‘thank you’, the other blogs can include that ping (with your URL) within the comments of the “referred to” post.
Does that make sense?
Peter
I like twitter, it’s the best tool to drive traffic to my website.
Twitter is really phenomenal, using it right will really help boosts your traffic and loyal readers if you’re lucky
Good tips on promoting blog posts on twitter.. making the tweet interesting is a good idea. Will try it out!
This is so great to see the story of the blog here through the interview. It makes me think that I promised to go back and blog for you
What I most liked about this experience is the natural flow of investment and entusiasme of different people at different times that ensured the growth of the blog and made us all learn together. The new site is excellent. I like how it values the authors while keeping the “whole” of the program evident. Great job! And proud to be part of tyhe story!
Thanks Peter to give us an opportunity to reflect upon and document a journey the team took in the last couple of years! An experience I hope will inspire others.
a nice post and thanks for visiting my blog, like to hear more from you
i love to Twitter my day to day activities to my friends and followers. Twitter is much better than blogging because it is direct to the point and does not require you to type so many unnecessary words.
1h
My take on this: you get what you pay for. If something is critical to what I do, I don’t use a free service. If I don’t have a choice (e.g. in the case of Twitter), I ensure that I have fallback plans — e.g. I am now getting a (paid!)subscription for Backupify.
I don’t see how we have any ‘rights’ when it comes to free services. The only right you have is to leave e.g. Yahoo and go to the competitor (who you might need to pay for), which will impact Yahoo’s bottom line because they will get fewer clicks. You can try to influence them, but rights, no.
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