Choosing the best blog for your needs - 10/09/2009

You may have decided you need a blog to keep your clients or friends up to date with your activities. When choosing a blog, there are two things to consider - firstly which blog software to use, and secondly where to host the blog. Let's look over the two separately:

Blogging software
Although there are many others, there are two main players in the blog world - Blogger (also known as Blogspot) and Wordpress.

Blogger is owned by Google, and is arguably the most popular blogging software. It is easy to set up, easy to update, and generally simple in appearance and features. Perfect if you don't want to delegate too much time to your blog and just want to get your point across.

Wordpress on the other hand is far more involving - you can even customise it to look like a full website. Many developers create plugins to enable you to add features such as searches and image editing software. The results can be better, however it will take more time to get the best out of it.

Hosting
You may have noticed that some blogs have a domain name such as myworld.wordpress.com, and others like myworld.com. The former is hosted by the blog company, and the latter is hosted on an independent server.

Hosting your blog with the provider is free, means you are always running the latest version of the blog software, and also includes you in the database so it is easier for other blog users to find you. However you cannot have your own domain name, and you are limited as to how much you can customise the appearance and features.

Hosting your blog yourself gives you an independent domain name, the ability to customise the blog as much as you like, and gives you peace of mind that you actually own it (if it's on your server, nobody can take it away from you.) There will be annual hosting costs though, and any updates to blog versions or plugins will have to be done manually.

To summarise, there really is no right or wrong answer, but it is important to take the above into consideration when planning your blog as it could save you time, money and headaches in the long run!

We are experienced in creating all types of blogs, so get in touch if you'd like us to help you set yours up.