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.
Tumblr
Tumblr is very easy to use but has a limited functionality, a limited choice of templates and widgets. You can post text, video and pictures to make simple blog posts and that is about it. That’s all good for someone who wants to publish a blog, has little time for it, and does not care too much about the layout and functionality.
Tumblr has a specific niche in its social networking function where you can “follow” other Tumblr blogs and repost their posts easily. Tumblr also lets you import RSS feeds as blog posts, a feature I am yet to find on any other blog platform.
You can find several browser plug-ins making it easy to clip pieces (text, video or pictures) from any website onto your Tumblr-blog.
I have several Tumblr blogs but use them for some specific purposes in which Tumblr excels:
On The Signs Along the Road, I publish quick and dirty clips from the Internet, which Tumblr does very well, with an excellent cross-posting facility using a Firefox plug-in.
I also use Tumblr’s a unique feature allowing you to integrate an RSS feed from another website and to convert them into a new Tumblr post, a technique I described in this post. The RSS-to-post function I use on AidBlogs, AidNews, Change Thru Info and NonProfit Blogs…
If you are into more serious blogging, though, then Tumblr might not be the right choice for you.
WordPress
Remember that WordPress comes in two flavours: WordPress.org, the self-hosted version, and WordPress.com which hosts your blog for you. Both are very popular amongst bloggers.
WordPress.com gives you all blogging functionality and is easy to use. It does not support more advanced features for its posts and widgets, such as integrating scripts and iFrames.
WordPress.com also does not allow the use of third-party themes. It does not allow the installation of plugins, small software packages that really make its brother, WordPress.org, such a versatile valuable blogging platform.
The self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org) on the contrary offers a wider range of themes and does not impose what you can and can not do in your widgets and blog posts. The biggest plus is the unlimited supply of third-party themes and the myriad of plugins that allow you to add almost any function imaginable.
So no matter what you want to use your blog for, take a serious look at WordPress.
One note, though: to make a WordPress.org blog ‘fire on all cylinders’, a number of plugins need to be installed. When Dave creates a WordPress.org blog for a client, he installs no less that nine plugins. Some of these plugins dramatically affect the SEO (Search Engine Optimization), allow readers to easily share your content on Twitter, Facebook, and other services and ease the navigation.
For each of my WordPress.org blogs, I install ten plug-ins for the basic functionality I want my blogs to have.
Blogger
Similarly to WordPress, Blogger is a versatile blog platform. Even though they host your blog (dropping their clumsy self-hosting option from the options), Blogger let’s you do whatever you like in HTML, scripting and CSS within templates, posts or widgets. So you can also mess up as much as you want, too. 
While Blogger lets you do “anything you want”, an out-of-the-box Blogger only has basic functionalities. Features I find essential like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), “related posts” function, “Read More” options, “Recent comments” features, social media functions, navigation, blog statistics, etc.. will have to be done manually by editing of your template file.
Some of these functions are so advanced or complex to implement, that you need to know what you are doing otherwise you will corrupt your template file, and completely screw up your blog. AND the more you customize your template, the more difficult it becomes to migrate to another template, as I described in a previous post.
Apart from that, the ease-of-use for the blogger, even when writing basic posts, is very different between e.g. Blogger and WordPress. We will cover this in a later post in this series, but let me tell you, Blogger draws the shorter stick by far.
Movable Type/Typepad
Typepad contains all the functionality you will ever need in a hosted blog. Its built-in connectivity to other social media-related services Feedburner, Twitter, Facebook, etc is second to none. The user-interface was recently overhauled making it much simpler to navigate.
If you want to use your blog as a small website then you need to seriously consider Typepad. None of the other blogging platforms have done as good a job with the menu bar as has Typepad. You can have items on the menu bar point to other websites (E.g. WordPress only let you point to your internal pages, and both Blogger and Tumblr don’t cater for this functionality)..
Selfhosted Movable Type is a high-end industrial strength content management system (CMS) wrapped in a blogging platform’s clothing. It is the only self-host blogging platform included in this review that allows additional blogs to be setup under the same installation. Moreover, these additional blogs can be setup by the blog’s admin and do not require an IT person. The Pro version of Movable Type also has built-in support for forums.
On the other hand, Movable Type is not for the weak of heart. It is more difficult to set up and to administrate. Ease-of-use is not its best side.
Concluding:
If you are satisfied with VERY basic blogging functionality, mostly to clip stuff from the Internet, and look for a very simple blog platform, then Tumblr will do.
For more versatility and freedom to publish whatever you want, however you want it, either Blogger, WordPress.com or Typepad will do, with a definite plus for the latter two.
For flexible selfhosted blogs, WordPress.org and Movable Type are your only two choices, but they are also the best blog platforms around, with a definitive plus for WordPress.org’s user friendly approach.
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.
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
