Best Blogging Platforms?

[ArminasX Saiman]

I’ve been using Blogger as my blogging platform for a while now, and it has its good and bad points. I’m wondering what other bloggers have to say about Blogger and alternate platforms? My impression is that there are only a few reasonable options:

• Blogger – Free. Functionally limited, but professionally managed
• Wordpress.com – Mostly free. Functionally limited, but professionally managed
• Wordpress hosted somewhere – Not free. Functionally rich, but self managed
• Typepad.com – Not free. Functionally rich and professionally managed?
• Various other self-hosted and self-managed options

I’ve been wondering if it’s time to bail on blogger, but I am not sure if I should, what I should move to, and whether it is worth the effort to do a move. My main concern is flexibility and professional management – I really don’t feel like doing upgrades to blogging software when I can spend my time more productively elsewhere (like blogging, for instance.)

What do you think?

[Jumpman Lane]

i turned my ol blog into a ezine. but i keep blogger cause i drove lotsa traffic there and the edit hmtl is a quick way to convert pix and text to hmtl for posting on other sites. Instead of hosting my on blog on my main website i just link to my ol blogger

[Harper Ganesvoort]

Unless Blogger has improved over the time I was on there writing another blog than this one, bail on it. I would strongly urge self-hosted WordPress, which isn't all that complicated once you get it installed (and I'd recommend WordPress for Dummies if you're feeling intimidated), followed by wordpress.com. Something about Typepad/Movable Type just does not move me, if you'll excuse the pun.

Incidentally, WordPress itself is free either way; I assume you were referring to having an account on a host? If that is a limiting factor, go with wordpress.com, which is free, but doesn't have the flexibility of plugins. In that way, it is limited like Blogger, but still superior in the long run, especially with the new release. WordPress self-hosted lets you customize far more with the plugin library and scads of templates -- or design your own template!

Peace, Harper

[Kanomi Pikajuna]

I hear good things about Wordpress and it's popular and flexible, but I'll stick with Blogger.

My biggest complaint about Blogger is that I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make a "jump" in my post, so basically anything I write gets dumped on the home page. There *are* instructions on how to do it, but they seem obsolete because they simply do not work. Or I am doing it wrong.

My next biggest complaint is having to link to images hosted elsewhere, since Google's Picasa tool is woefully inadequate. Or again, I am doing it wrong. =)

But I like their analytics, I like having it tied into my email, and with Google I feel relatively secure they won't vanish. And I do not want to recreate all that content in Wordpress!

I would never use Livejournal again. What in the world was that about?

[Jordyn Carnell]

I use do screenshots in sl, download to desktop, then rename them, then use "resizeit" on them.. then just use bloggers upload photo thingy to post..

What I can't figure out is how to cross publish in multiple blogs.. or how to do that "to read more" thingy you do..

[Harper Ganesvoort]

The simplest thing on cross-posting, as far as I can see, is to simply copy the source (with the tags) from the original blog article and paste it into the new blog(s). That's what I do when I "guest-post" at Vicious Studios. I flip WordPress' edit window to the HTML view, copy all, then go to Blogger and paste it in the HTML view there. After that, I add a "Cross-posted from Around the Grid with Harper" to the Blogger entry, linking it to the original WordPress entry. Then, when I publish on Blogger, I have the permalink that I can add in as a "Cross-posted to Vicious Studios" link on Around the Grid.

To put a break in your post, you need a platform that supports the technique, usually some sort of tinycode extender. WordPress does that I know of; Blogger didn't the last that I was aware, but I haven't used the WYSIWYG functions of Blogger much since I left them on my RL blog.

Peace, Harper

[Karl Herber]

Another way to cross-post is with a tool called semagic, which was originally made for Livejournal, but it works a breeze with wordpress (both wordpress.cpom and self-hosted) and Blogger as well. You just click "Post to multiple blogs" and tick the ones you want to post to.

[Patou Dumont]

I use WP for years now and love it. But before WP I was a MovableType user. It's pretty good, but I think they made a bad move in the past that allowed WP to rise.

Updates on WP are as easy as a brise. I love it and recomend. :-)

[Karl Herber]

I had a Blogger blog for about a month before I decided I hated it and I moved to wordpress.com. The only other service I would swap it for is a self-hosted wordpress.org blog but I am a total technical dunce, so I'm sticking with something that's easy enough for my feeble little brain to understand. If I need extra functionality (which I don't, right now) I'll get a paid account at wordpress.com instead. I actually also had a Livejournal at the same time for a while, but I've since scrapped that one as well, I hate that site.

[Stuart Warf]

I tried a few blogging platforms like b2evolution, drupal, joomla and blogger before I finally switched to Wordpress. Wordpress is great and I love using it on a Self-Hosted site for all the plugin functionality.

So... I personally recommend Wordpress

[Isadora Graves]

I started off with Blogger and used it for a number of years, but after trying out Wordpress, I was hooked. I had my own hosting already, so the extra cost wasn't a problem, but WP does have a free online-blog feature similar to Blogger at wordpress.com.