Pros and Cons of Blogging Services
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The following services offer blog hosting, which takes much of the guesswork out of creating and maintaining a weblog. For what you gain in ease of use, you sacrifice in control and customization. If new to the blogging world and looking for a quick way to cast off, one of the following popular services might be right for you.
- Blogger.com (was BlogSpot.com) is a free service and is backed by the power of Google. That means Google's other services, like Picasa for pictures, are available to help you manage media content. Though Blogger doesn't require payment, it requires quite a bit of technical expertise to customize.
- WordPress.com is mostly free, though you need to pay for "Premium" features such as CSS customization, extra file storage and video publishing. In addition, ads will be shown on your blog unless you pay a fee to have them removed.
- TypePad.com will cost you $14.95 monthly for a wide range of services. One offering that sets TypePad apart from Blogger and WordPress is built-in SEO tools.
- Tumblr.com is more of a weblog and microblog hybrid. Free to use and lauded for its clean, customizable look, Tumblr is geared toward rapid-fire sharing of everything -- text, pictures, video, links, quotes, tweets -- from anywhere -- browser, phone, email, desktop, etc. It is not as functional as more heavy-duty blogging tools, but can be an effective way to boost your credibility with an audience riding the social networking wave. If web cred is only part of what you're looking to achieve with your blog strategy, consider having a Tumblr blog serve a complimentary role to your main blog.
Hosted by You
- WordPress.org has the download. Totally.
- MovableType.com and for the techno-joyous, MovableType.org
