Thinking of Starting a Blog? – Platform Choices

So you’re sat thinking about starting a blog, but the idea mystifies you, which platform, how do you choose a name, or maybe you are just sat there panicking, thinking how much you want to blog but have no idea where to begin. Well sit back and let me try and help.

The first you thing you need to do is think why do you want to blog, are you looking for a personal blog to record moments and memories for yourself, do you want to make money from it or are you happy to accept what maybe sent your way.

Now before I go any further I should probably point out, blogging isn’t easy – for many of us it takes years before we make anything moneywise and even then it comes with hours spent taking photos, editing, writing, publicizing for very little in return. Of course some people get lucky and get noticed near the start, some of those will of course very quickly forge a place in the blogging world, while many others will disappear from sight.

So first things first you need to choose a platform (and this takes us back to those original questions), while there are others out there I would suggest looking at the main two either blogger or wordpress.

Blogger is a great starting platform and one that many people will and do stay on – you are limited to the fact you cannot self host with blogger, but many people see this as a non-issue choosing to only get a domain name anyway. Blogger offers you the ability to really do what you want – while it isn’t as customisable as self-hosted wordpress, it is easy to manipulate and for a beginner working the coding isn’t to hard and if you aren’t great with working it yourself many designers will work for pocket friendly prices and you can even pick designs up for free.

When it comes to making money – it is easy to implement ad systems such as adsense and blogger really allow you to make what you want while running on their platform.

WordPress.com
Wordpress has two different platforms – the first I will talk about is the free to access .com version, this is a very limited version, which doesn’t allow you to run many plugins or use certain coding. You also cannot earn money bar using their own ad system. While I wouldn’t suggest this to many people – if you are looking to run a personal for you only blog this might be for you.

WordPress.com does allow you to add your own vanity domain but you do need to pay them an extra subscription (on top of the price you pay for your domain) for redirecting.

WordPress.org
To run on this version of wordpress you need to be self hosted, the software is still free and is actually provided by many hosts on a one click install basis. WordPress.org allows the most freedom of any platforms, many of the themes available for wordpress.com are also available for .org but these often offer many more adaptations.

My main reason for going to wordpress.org was peace of mind, I owned my web space, it gave me a sense of freedom I was lacking with blogger.

However sometimes freedom comes with a price and with .org that is the price of both a domain and hosting and while that is still quite often very pocket friendly, it could be to0 much for some. It’s also worth bearing in mind self hosted websites can be more prone to being hacked and the cleaning up can again come at a price, unless you know someone who can help (which thankfully in UK Bloggers there is quite often someone around who can) you could feel quite alone.

If you have any questions about any of the platforms – please just do leave them in comments and we will try and answer them ASAP.

This is the first in the series of “Thinking of Setting Up a Blog” Do keep your eyes open for more instalments.