How do you blog? Should you use a free service, buy a subscription, or go down another avenue? There are some pretty big differences and we list them here.
Free Blogging
Free blogs are great, because, well they’re free. In fact, they may be perfect for a bunch of users. However, if you are a business looking to blog, be aware of these limitations.
- They assume only one author will write or contribute to the blog
- There is a limited (or sometimes no) ability to create a taxonomy or categories for storing posts
- Only provide a handful of templates that don’t allow much customization
- Provide crude publishing tools – mostly text boxes without any ability to format your posts
- Limited or no comments tools
- File upload (PDF or images) is usually not allowed
Good free services include: Blogger and iUpload
Subscription-based Tools
Those that you pay for include some of the more advanced tools like category creation, multiple authoring abilities, visitor registration, tools, and more. This often requires that you install some server software.
More advanced paid services include: Movable Type and TypePad
Open Source Options
There are also some open source software tools that offer some of the most flexibility, as they offer complete customization from design to multiple access to adding modules for your needs.
More advanced open-source services include: Drupal and WordPress
If you are new to blogging, ContentRobot suggests that you play around with one or more of the free ones for your personal use. Then for your business blog, we would provide a more robust platform with our expertise to make it happen.
Other Cool Tools
Some other software that can make your blog publishing easier:
- Ecto is a feature-rich desktop blogging client for
MacOSX and Windows, supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as Blogger, Drupal, MovableType, TypePad, WordPress - Blogger for Word allows you to blog from Word interface (to Blogger blogs only)
- BlogJet allows you to blog right from Windows