If you’re new to blogging, you’re faced with a daunting choice: what blogging service or software should you use? The answer depends upon several important requirements:
Can you afford to buy a domain and hosting for a website?
This is one of the first questions you should address, because the answer dictates what you will do next.
If you can afford hosting, then you will benefit greatly from purchasing your own domain, purchasing hosting services, and having your blog run on your own server (shared hosting is the usual service people get, so when I say “your own server” I don’t mean it has to be a dedicated server). The big advantage here is having total control over your content and setup. The big disadvantage is the technical expertise required to set everything up and manage it.
If you cannot afford hosting, then you will only be able to use one of the free blogging services available. The main disadvantage to these free services is a lack of control over your content and your setup. The main advantage (other than being free) is that they are easy to work with and manage.
Are you comfortable with HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and FTP clients?
If you are comfortable with these technologies, and you can afford a domain and hosting, then the platform of choice for you would probably be WordPress as a self-install. Are there even any other platforms? Certainly: Textpattern, Movable Type, and Geeklog come to mind. Considering the wealth of resources available for WordPress, however, you might want to stick with the leader of the blogging pack.
If you aren’t knowledgeable on this nerd stuff, then your choices become more limited (remember: tech knowledge is power, so I suggest you get geeky). Basically, if you want a self-hosted WordPress, you need to choose a hosting service that provides a “one-click” install service such as Fantastico or Metropolis (well, okay, only GoDaddy has Metropolis). The most important differentiating factor for this choice? The quality of your hosting company’s customer service and tech support. Of course, you could always pay someone to set everything up for you to get you started.
If you are coding-challenged and don’t want to pay for hosting, then your choices are going to focus on free services such as WordPress.com (as opposed to WordPress.org), Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace, Vox, MSN Spaces Windows Live Spaces (or whatever they’re calling it now), Tumblr, and, of course, others too numerous to mention.
Do you plan on placing ads or other types of JavaScript code on your blog, such as various “widgets”?
Because if you do, then WordPress.com, MySpace, LiveJournal, Windows Live Spaces, and many others do not allow for JavaScript on your blog. No JavaScript means no advertising with Google AdSense or other ad networks. Your remaining choice is now Blogger.
By the way, I wrote this post as a response to a question sent in by a reader. I felt everyone could benefit from hearing the answer. If you have questions you’d like to see answered, you can contact me anytime. Readers’ questions are often a great source of topics for blog posts. You never know when your question might benefit others.
