This is the third in a series of get a real blog posts, designed to help you make the jump to self-hosted blogging (if that’s what you want to do).
Finding the right blogging platform is important. This post looks at some of the popular alternatives and why you might go for one over another. There are a lot of alternatives that it doesn’t cover - it is not intended to be an exhaustive list. When in doubt, please do some research, talk to other people, and experiment.
WordPress
I like WordPress - because it is what I am used to. WordPress uses the the PHP scripting language and MySQL database - both of which I have used for years at work and at play. WordPress has a lot of plugins, some of which are really really good (and some that don’t work at all or get in one another’s way).
It may be that you are migrating from WordPress.com and are already familiar with the basic operation of WordPress - and this can be a good reason to stay with it (although it must be said that self-hosted WordPress - sometimes called multi-user or MU - is different to the wordpress.com version in several ways). You can download it for free from wordpress.org.
PS: If you’re thinking about setting up a social network around your blog, keep an eye on the BuddyPress project. It isn’t Facebook, but it will allow you to set up some similar functionality.
Movable Type
Movable Type is popular - I’ve used it myself, but gave it up because I found it easier to do what I wanted in WordPress. Donna uses Movable Type as do several other famous bloggers - and some heavy-traffic sites like Boing Boing and Treehugger. You can run multiple blogs from the one control panel, which is handy, and Movable Type has a personal edition that is free. There are also Enterprise and Community editions (and the Community edition contains some of the same functionality available right now as promised in the future with WordPress MU with BuddyPress).
Blogger on your own hosting
Blogger (blogname.blogspot.com) will work on your own domain hosting - it is just a matter of setting it up that way. That said, you are still stuck with the basic problems of Blogger - it is hard to do anything much else than post one posting at a time.
Drupal and other community CMS
I’d have to say that Drupal is the easiest way I know to set up a social community site in a hurry. It is a real web content management system (CMS). The default installation is fairly low-tech out of the box - it has a blog option, but it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles straight out of the box. The wiki option is much the same.
The exciting thing is that Drupal (and Plone, and many other community CMS) can be configured to work as well as one of the multi-user versions of Movable Type (but without the license fee). Examples include The Rake Magazine, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Warner Bros Records, and the New York Observer - all full-on commercial websites.
Quick BlogCast
Quick BlogCast gets you up and blogging quickly - it is a cheap hosting add-on to some domain reselling packages. It is not as configurable as WordPress MU or Movable Type, but it is worth considering if you need a blog in a hurry on your own domain name.
Recent comparison resources are a little thin on the ground
Basically, there aren’t a lot of comparison resources around - most of the people who write about one blog platform over another are either commercial vendors, developer groups or user-fans - or the reviews are years old. Here’s what a bit of googling turned up:
- Wikipedia has a list of different blog publishing systems, but it isn’t very useful for making a comparison.
- Darren Rowse wrote a good post that is much like this one, but considers the free options like blogspot as well.
- Asymptomatic has a comparison chart but it is way out of date.
- SitePoint has a review that is also out of date.
- Online Journalism Review has one that is around 18 months old.
If you want to find out about blog platforms, it is probably just a matter of research research research.
Other considerations
It has to be said that there are other considerations.
- One big one is ease of installation - for example, some hosting providers have a set of one-click applications that take, well, one click to install. The hosting setup has scripts that take care of the hassle for you (like knowing the name, username and password to your database server). If you are unsure, it is easier to go with the blogging platform that is on your hosting provider’s one-click list.
- Another is technical support - if you have a friend who is an experienced user of Movable Type (and they are willing to help you) then this is worth considering as an extra tick against that platform.
Next: Finding a hosting provider and transferring your domain name to them.
I love WordPress!
Okay, that’s not much of a recommendation, because I pretty much decided to set up a website, discovered (very late) what blogging was, and discovered WordPress all in the same day. But it’s worth noting that if your host doesn’t provide setup for it, someone from WordPress will do the installation for you.
All I can say is that I haven’t come across much that it can’t do, and there are so many resources out there if you want to start really playing with it. Unlike you, Andrew, I didn’t even know what MySQL and PHP (and CSS) were but it didn’t take long for me to figure out how to fake it.
But if you don’t want to get down and dirty with, yes, technical support really is a major consideration.
Hi cerebralmum,
thank you for your comment. I love WordPress because it fits what I need and I know enough to not screw it up too often, and it sounds like it works for you too. Too often I think that people do the cool thing rather than the needful - if it works, do it
You don’t need to know MySQL and PHP - this does help if you want to customise your own templates (with some CSS knowledge) and track down issues with warring plugins.
I love the community aspect of technical support in the blogosphere - a lot of people have helped me, and I enjoy helping others.
I didn’t know that WordPress themselves will help out with installation - that is a really good thing to know and it might be worth an article on the process.
Best regards, Andrew
Sorry, didn’t have time to grab the link before but to get WordPress installed you can go to WordPress Install4Free. They’ve separated from WordPress since I last looked, but their WordPress profiles are all listed on their new site.
And yes - I am slowly, and clumsily working on customising. One of the great things with my new host is that I now have a lovely sandbox to play in as well.