Digital Marketing
best blogging software

best blogging software

The blogging platform war is getting really interesting and a lot of the discussion I find myself in lately revolves around what is going on with various CMS systems. The market can essentially be defined into 3 main camps: remotely hosted, self-hosted, and community-based systems. I have used almost every blogging platform available and each of them has its ups and downs. In this article I will cover the best options for each area considering price, usability, market share, and of course SEO potential.

All of these products are either open source, completely free, or have a working free version. Links were removed from this article, so you may want to check out the best original software for blogging. [http://www.profitpapers.com/reviews/best-blogging-software.php] article in ProfitPapers.

Remotely Hosted Blogging Software

(Note: I can’t really recommend any of these from an SEO standpoint, as optimizing for a domain you don’t own or control is obviously not a good marketing plan.)

blogger

Blogger is completely free and currently has the majority of the user base hosted remotely, but not by much. Bought by Google in 1999, Blogger essentially ignited the blogging trend we see today. It is by far the easiest overall solution to use and if you are a novice user looking to throw up some recipes or poetry, this is for you. Blogger is completely free and includes some great features like comments, photo blogging, and a basic community feel with user profiles. Because it’s so streamlined, you may not find some features with Blogger that are only available through third-party plugins. As a side note, Blogger weblogs perform quite well on search engines and this recently exploded and became the first choice for spam blogs or splogs. A splog is a weblog used for the sole purpose of getting inbound links or generating thousands of keyword-packed pages with AdSense and the like. The recent Google Jagger update removed a large part of this. Free.

type pad

Released in 2003, Typepad is a product of Sixapart, the creators of Movable Type. it is heavily based on MT but there are some important improvements and differences. Your blog can accommodate one or more photo albums with automatic thumbnail generation. You can easily add music, books, and other media to Type Lists, which take a thumbnail from Amazon and other retailers for easy display in your sidebar. Typepad is also much more technical than Blogger, so some knowledge of HTML is recommended. On that note, editing your blog to look the way you want is pretty easy too, and Typepad blogs are known for being very easy on the eyes, intuitive, and easy to navigate. In Sixapart’s business model, Typepad is aimed at home and small business users, while Movable Type is aimed at larger businesses or for internal intranets. Price: Basic, $4.95 per month; premium, $8.95 to $14.95 per month.

xanga

These guys originated in 1999 as a sharing site for book, music, and movie reviews. Although it quickly morphed into a full-fledged blogging tool, Xanga still maintains the ability to run a powerful review site. Xanga pulls data from various retailers like Amazon.com, including thumbnails, prices, and a cover. The software is also very useful for newbies with a powerful WYSIWYG editor that allows easy editing of HTML, adding smileys, links and other symbols. Using blog rings, it’s also easy to interact with Xanga’s other 3 million users to share interests, ideas, and of course, traffic. Xanga comes in a free and a $25 flavor.

Mentions: Blogsome, Blogster, MindSay, Multiply,

Self-hosted blogging software

wordpress

WordPress originally started as a modification of an older open source package known as B2. WP is MT’s biggest competition and is often the bathroom for endless WordPress vs Movabletype style threads on the internet. Although it was launched just over a year ago, WP has really taken the blogosphere by storm. And for good reason: WordPress is completely free under the GNU license and packed with features you won’t find anywhere else. It is also much easier to install and get blogging for novice users and has a very large and helpful community. WP runs on PHP/mySQL and is quite scalable judging by some of the very large and heavily trafficked sites I see using it. It also has utilities to import Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger and b2 files. WordPress recently upped the ante when Yahoo recently included them in their hosting packages, in addition to MT. I have to admit I find myself researching WP more and more and will probably convert Profitpapers to WP as I get time (it can be a tricky business). WordPress is free.

Mobile types

Aside from perhaps Greymatter (the original open source blogging tool), Movabletype dominated the blogging market share in 2002-2004. Released in late 2001, the Perl-based Movable Type by Sixapart has held a large share of the blogging market, mainly due to the fact that there is a free version (supports up to 3 weblogs) and that it is incredibly powerful, intuitive and easy. personalize. Template-based Movable Type also has one of the largest communities of developers and blogging enthusiasts, which means lots of support, brainstorming, and of course plugins. Movable Type can be configured to dynamically generate HTML, PHP, or any other type of page you want, which means it’s incredibly scalable, fast, and loved by spiders. It is perhaps the best known blogging software for SEO purposes and is what currently powers Profitpapers and several of my other projects. Moveabletype is Free with 3 authors, 1 weblog and no support or $69.95 with unlimited weblogs, authors and full support.

text pattern

Textpattern is the brainchild of Dean Allen and was written to make publishing content easier for those unwilling to learn HTML. Like WP and MT, Textpattern runs on PHP and mySQL for easy administration, backups, and feeding. What really sets TextPattern apart from the rest is the integration of Textile. Textile is an easy content formatting tool for those who don’t know HTML. WP & MT also have modules for textiles, but it’s native to the Textpattern system. Another advantage of the app is its superior handling of comment spam due to its lower market share. On blogs I keep running WP and MT, I often find myself cleaning spam every day, while on some very busy text pattern sites I only get spam from manual comments (not powered by bots). TP is open source.

Credits: Bloom, LifeType, Serendipity.

Community Based Blogging Software

slash

Way back in 1997, Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda launched a website known as Chips & Dips, provided through his student account at Hope College in Michigan. In 1999, Andover.net acquired Slashdot. Shortly after, the underlying code was released as open source software called Slash. Like Movable Type and Greymatter, Slash runs on Perl, but it also has established ties to MySQL and a solid track record of scaling to huge levels of traffic. To give you an idea, the term ‘slashdotted’ originated from acquiring a link on this now infamous and very popular tech news website and consequently seeing their servers melt down. If you’ve never messed with Slash before, you should as it’s a pretty powerful platform. Slash is open source.

Ladle

Another popular Perl-based community blogging software is Scoop. Scoop is the software that powers Kuro5shin, DailyKos, and many other busy community weblogs. Scoop took the idea from Slashdot and expanded on it, making discussion rather than news the focus of the app. Where Slashdot posts tend to have a comment link added that draws readers away from the site, Scoop points to stories written by community members that keep the reader inside their own weblog. Scoop is also well known for handling high volumes of traffic and a large, highly technical community. The scoop is free.

Drupal

Drupal is a popular open source community blogging platform with a large community of users and developers. Drupal is not only free, but it is very powerful. Instead of Perl, which is sometimes quite difficult to decode, even if you are a fluent coder, Drupal uses a PHP/mySQL platform. Drupal is also a very community-focused application with a built-in forum, download area, and hundreds of other hacks and hacks. If you’re looking for a lot of functionality, give Drupal a try – the project has become quite mature. It’s also much easier to use and customize than Scoop or Slash. Drupal is also another open source project.

Mentions: LiveJournal, PHP Nuke.

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