This weeks tweet chat was really busy with lots of bloggers and craft sellers getting involved to tell us what they liked best about their chosen blogging platform and asking fellow tweeters all sorts of questions.
Popular Blogging Platforms
The following is a quick post to review the gist of our discussions about which is the best blogging platform for craft bloggers and people selling crafts online to use.
These are just a handful, they are the ones I personally am most familiar with - I have used all of these in the past. If you want a more extensive list, (there are so many more) take a look here.
Blogger
Wordpress.org
Wordpress.com
Tumblr
This tweet was one of my favourites from the tweet chat. It's also worth remembering that the quality of the content is the most important part of blogging - not just which blogging platform is best!
Wordpress
If someone tells you they have a Wordpress blog they either have wordpress.com or wordpress.org.
It's a bit like the difference between renting or owning a house - with Wordpress.org you can paint or knock through walls and build an extension if you please, with Wordpress.com you need full permission from the landlord, (who has very particular tastes) to do anything - that is unless you pay him!.
The free dot com version of Wordpress is not terribly customisable. You can use the free Wordpress themes that are available but not any others. You also have to accept that Worpress may place advertising on your blog. You can pay for upgrades but these can become quite costly once you start to add it all up (see products available and prices).
The most popular blog platform (or the platform people were most passionate about) in our Tweet Chat appeared to be Wordpress.org .
Many of the bloggers and craft sellers seemed to agree that Wordpress.org (self hosted) was the best option for blogging because of the complete control the blogger had over their content and design. However, it was noted by a few craft bloggers that sometimes paying for a professional to help design your blog on wordpress.org was well worth the money invested.
If you don't have that kind of cash then take a look at all these books available on how to use Wordpress!
Blogger
I use blogger - I pay a few pounds a year for this domain name and that's it - I've been hacking about with my template for a couple of years - it's probably time for a major redesign!
If it is a 100% free blog, with the opportunity to download free blogger themes from designers all over the net, you may find Blogger is the best bet. It is very simple to use and can be customised using the 'Blogger in Draft' features or as much as your knowledge of html / css permits.
There are plenty of websites and blogs with the sole purpose of showing people how to hack blogger code and also offering free themes which can be downloaded and uploaded to your blog in minutes. I love tinkering with my blogger blog. If you are a complete beginner you might want to start here - 'Getting Started with Blogger'
Tumblr
I also use Tumblr, it's fantastic for very quickly sharing images and is a bridge between micro blogging sites like twitter and full on blogs like Wordpress. The site is set up in a very social way and encourages likes and follows between tumblr users. I recently had a post 'featured' by tumblr which sent my follower numbers soaring.
Tumblr is very customisable and is not solely for posting images - in fact you can use tumblr in a very similar way to blogger and wordpress. There are free and paid for themes. I have a free theme which I have customised by tinkering with the template. Click Gallery above to see my tumblr - I love it!
Back it Up!
My advice is to always back up your content, no matter what platform you use! It takes seconds to do this with blogger (settings/other/export blog) and then no matter what happens, your content is safe on your own hardrive! I'd be devasted if I lost my archive of blog posts due to some hacker or a blog platform accidentally deleting your account - wouldn't you!?
Please add your comment here, which do you think is the best blogging platform?