Today I start from basics of blogging, like what is a Blog, what is blogging and who is a blogger?
If we extend the word Blog then the full form is (A place on the Internet where we express our thoughts and we can also call it “Weblog”). Some internet users call it with different names like – A Digital Magazine, A Diary, Newscast, Collector’s meeting place, place to show your art, information sharing place, teaching hub, learning spot and if I have to call it in my words then it would be “A place where almost everything can happen by words.”
A regular blog merge with text, images, videos and links, and many more elements and the blog readers can post queries, comments and their thoughts as well as feedback’s about your posts and communicate with the author. The comments and discussions between the author and reader are proof of a successful blog.
In the blogging world, you will see the three words continuously:
Blog – An online journal.
Blogger – The person (Author) who owns and contributes to a blog.
Blogging – The action for creating the blog.
“A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom”.
What is a Blog, What is Blogging and Who is Blogger?
What is Blog?
A Blog is a shortened form of “Weblog”, this word is used to narrate the all kind of websites which share any kind of information with different types of niche’s (Topic of Website) on the internet. It includes articles, videos, links, comments and many more.
- Personal Blog: This is the place where someone who has some skills and he/she want to share their skills with others, then blogger use this place to show his/her skills. In a personal blog, you can share thoughts, poems, photography skills and you can review any product and sell it to your reader via affiliate marketing.
- Business Blog: These kinds of blogs are developing to publish their products and services and used to enhance the public relation of a company. In the past time this type of blog is good for small companies but today all huge brands and multinational companies have using this type of blog to publish their activities, products launch, products information and many more.
- Niche or Topical Blogs: This type of blogs useful for anyone because it will work with any particular interest. Niche blog could be about many topics like Education, sports, fashion, home interior, gardening, pest controls tips, pets, childcare, technology, cooking, how to’s and many more. If you have any kind of skill or talent then there is a blog waiting for you and then you can earn a good amount of money with your passion.
- Media Blogs: This type of blogs depends on your content. For e.g., if you love to make videos and post on your blog as well as on YouTube then you’re a vlogger. If you are a photographer or you are a painter then your blog will be called as photoblog or art blog.
- Insight Blogging: Insight blogging has some great topics like Sharing insights, Original ideas, commentary or trends on a particular topic.
- Piggyback Blogging: In this kind of blogs blogger writes about a particular topic which is popular in the media and on meme website like Tailrank.
- Life Blogging: In this type of blog, blogger sharing his or someone else real life story which will be inspiring for all readers. For e.g. TheLogicalIndian.
- Link Blogging: In this, you should collect a huge series of links to websites, blogs, vlogs or any other online platform; here readers get all useful links at one place. (Note: This kind of blogs can get a huge amount of traffic but if you provide real and useful links.)
What is Blogging?
Each and every action is done by you for your blog is called blogging. In blogging you have to learn some skills like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Writing, Designing and some basic knowledge of coding languages like (HTML, CSS, PHP, JAVASCRIPT), I am not saying that you have to learn these coping skills for blogging but if you have basic knowledge of these languages then it will help you in your blogging career.
If you are damn serious about your blogging career then you have to learn some skills for a bright future in blogging and for becoming a top blogger and entrepreneur you have to be punctual and hard working.
Who is Blogger?
A person who handles and manages the blog is called a blogger. Blogger can share his/her skills, thoughts, stories and many more.
To become a blogger you have to start your own blog on any niche and write unique content or articles on your topic and start publishing it and make it visible to as many as users on Social Media.
To learn coding languages you can try some best options in the market where you can learn coding for free (W3Schools, Codecademy, Teamtreehouse)
Writing Skills:
You should be a good writer to write a unique and useful content for your readers but if you are not then don’t think that you can’t write well just be confident and improve yourself daily like me (Karan) and you can try some tips of mine which I follow for myself in daily life (Learn at least 5 unique words daily, Read English newspaper daily at least one hour, Be a Researcher about your niche and write at least one article daily). You should learn On-Page Optimization seriously because the search engines are the only one who will give you success.
Important Factor for Blogging:
You need to be a Social Media Marketer because, after search engines, the social media platforms are the second most important place to drive traffic to your blog.
Investment in Blogging Business:
Everyone knows that if you want to start a business then you need to invest money and in blogging career, you have two choices whether you want a free place to show your skills or you want a place only for you. Alright, I suggest that if you choose to blog as a career option and want to become an entrepreneur with your hard work then go to your own domain and hosting platform.
if you are doing this just for fun then you can try platforms like this WordPress.com and Blogger.com
Are you confused while choosing the best blogging platform? Frankly speaking, it’s really a tough choice. Today, there are a number of blogging platforms available and their features are more than sufficient to confuse someone so, how will come to know which one is best for you. Here, we have explained a complete guide to help you choose the right keyword research for beginners one for your blogging platforms.
Before moving on to the features, lets first find out what kind of platform you need
Being a beginner, you are expecting the platform to be simple and easy to set up. Most of us are also looking for something that doesn’t require any type of coding. You might also be having a dream design for your blog and thus here the blogging platform plays a vital role is backlinks submitter sites. Making a wrong choice will not only take you away from the dream design but you may also face a lot of difficulties in the future.
Let’s come to the features, pros, and cons of the top blogging platforms now.
#1. WordPress.org
No need to say that its one of the best and the most popular blogging platform WordPress SEO friendly. We have seen many people getting confused between the two wordpress.org and wordpress.com. The difference is that wordpress.org is an open source platform. You can build a website on your own. It’s a self-hosted service and this means that you will have to purchase hosting in order to host your website with free blogging platforms.
Pros:-
- (i) WordPress lets you control and customize each and everything of your website
- (ii) You can add as many extra features you want to buy just installing the plugins
- (iii) you get a huge bunch of themes and plugins and thus you can get the look and functionality as per your requirement
- (iv) This tool is completely SEO and search engine friendly
Cons:-
- (i) You need a bit of learning before customizing your website
- (ii) Managing the backups and security is completely manual
Price:- Its totally free and most of the plugins and themes of wordpress.org is also free. You just have to pay for the hosting.
#2. Wordpress.com
This is basically a blog hosting service which one can use free of cost. You can even configure your own custom domain name, storage, and other services.
Pros:-
- (i) Predefined setup is provided
- (ii) Easiest to manage
Cons:-
- (i) you get very limited options and features
- (ii) You can customize your website completely
- (iii) Not good for long-running blogs
- (iv) The blog is not owned by you and WordPress have the right to suspend your blog and account if you violate their terms of service
Price:- Basic account of WordPress is free but, you will see ads and other brandings all around the site. The basic plan is $2.99/month and you can remove the WordPress logo and advertising from the website.
#3. Blogger
This is yet another free blogging service offered by Google. Free best blogging platforms, You can easily set up your blog and even a non-techy guy also can start their blog with just some clicks.
Pros:-
- (i) It’s free
- (ii) Easy to use and manage and no need for any technical knowledge
- (iii) You get awesome performance along with security and reliability
Cons:-
- (i) Very limited basic blogging tools
- (ii) very limited design options
- (iii) Blogger is been updated in a very long interval
- (iv) Google holds the right to suspend your blog if they found any breach of terms and conditions
- (v) If the blog gets successful, it becomes really difficult to transfer the website to WordPress
Price:- It’s free.
#4. Joomla
This is yet another best blogging platforms which are similar to WordPress.org. if you are looking to build your website or blog on Joomla then you must have a good amount of coding skills. This is also a self-hosted system and you need to have a domain and hosting in order to use it.
Pros:-
- (i) You can customize the blog as you want
- (ii) It’s free
- (iii) add or remove the features you want
Cons:-
- (i) Joomla community is a lot smaller than WordPress and thus you get limited themes and plugins
- (ii) Support is really very limited
- (iii) you will have to make backups, updates, and security of your own.
Price:- Joomla is 100% free, but you will have to spend money on domain and hosting.
#5. Magento
This is another alternative of wordpress.org and Joomla but needs to do all the hard work my own. This tool basically needs hardcore coding and thus you must be a coding expert if you want to use Magento.
Pros:
- (i) Websites built on Magento are highly customizable
- (ii) Highly powerful and highly responsive tool
Cons:-
- (i) Bad support from the community as the people in the community is low
- (ii) Very limited themes and plugins
Price:- tool is 100% free, but you will have to pay for the domain and hosting. If you are not good, with coding, you will have to hire an expert and spend money.
#6. Wix.com
This is a hosted platform which one can use to build blogs or websites. This platform provides a very easy way to make blogs. The reason is that it provides drag and drop tools. If you want you can even add a blog to your website by Wix Blog app.
Pros:-
- (i) easy customizations of a site using multiple templates and also using the third party addon.
- (ii) easy drag and drop support, no need for any coding
- (iii) quick and very easy setup
Cons:-
- (i) Free account is very limited as you will see the Wix logo and ads
- (ii) very limited free third-party apps
- (iii) you cant change templates once you made a choice
- (iv) you will have to pay in order to get E-commerce support.
Wix Prices:- Basic Web Builder is free but if you want to use a custom domain and remove ads then you will have to pay a minimum of $4.50/month.
#7. Weebly.com
This is yet another hosted platform that one can use. It has got drag and drop tools which makes developing the website very easy. They have got tons of themes which you can use in order to make your blog look awesome.
Pros:-
- (i) Easy drag and drop web builder
- (ii) the quick setup even a child a do
- (iii) with the free plan, you can give the service a try
Cons:-
- (i) Limited built-in features and you can’t add more features too
- (ii) very limited configuration with a third-party platform
- (iii) Exporting your Weebly site to other platform is very difficult.
Price:- Paid plans start from $8.00/month which have got very limited features but to get all the features, you can pay up to $49/month
#8. Squarespace
This is one of the services that allow people to create websites with their drag and drop web builder. It especially focuses on the small-scale people who want to make their presence over the internet.
Pros:-
- (i) It’s simple and easy to use especially for beginners
- (ii) It has got the best-designed templates
- (iii) offers domain with HTTPs/SSL and also the e-commerce support
Cons:-
- (i) It is limited to its own platform
- (ii) Personal plat limits you to only 20 pages and 2 authors
- (iii) You can integrate only some of the services
Price:- Personal plan started from $16/month, for the business plan you will have to pay $26/month
#9. Tumblr
This tool is a bit different from other platforms. This is considered as the microblogging platform which includes social media too which will help you in making your social media presence.
Pros:-
- (i) It’s free and damn easy to use
- (ii) it provides integrated social media
- (iii) since it’s a microblogging tool, its quick to blog videos, images, gifs, etc
Cons:-
- (i) it has got a very limited set of options which you can extend
- (ii) Many themes are available but they cant provide additional features
- (iii) importing or backing up the blog to another platform is very difficult.
Price:- It’s free to use, you can even configure your custom domain, there are many third-party apps available that you can use and configure easily.
Which one to choose?
Choosing the best is really difficult. But if you are looking for something that has everything in it then you must go for wordpress.org
“Since Blogger and WordPress.com don’t provide much features and you are bounded by many kinds of terms and conditions, we are keeping both of them on the rejected list. But, if you think that you need a very basic blog with very minimal functions and features, you can go for any of the two.”
Choosing the Best CMS
Now, let’s move on to choosing the best cms for blogging. When it comes to CMS, all can be considered as the best. But since we are looking for the best blogging platform for beginners, We are looking for features like easiness, multiple layouts, awesome support, good performance and as less coding is possible.
WordPress is one of the best CMS that is used worldwide. The reason being is it has got all the things that we require. The first and foremost thing is that it’s easy to use and one can easily set it up. Even if the user isn’t tech savvy, the WordPress hosting providers are nowadays using the one-click installations which made it really easier to install and set up the WordPress website.
Though these options are also available for Joomla and Magento the fact is that Joomla comes second in terms of difficulty and Magento need a highly expert coder. Installing both these CMS are also easy, but customizing the website on these CMS is really complex and even a moderate level of coder also face difficulties while using them.
Another reason for using WordPress is that the WordPress community is very big and thus some of the other people are always available to help you out. You can even discuss with the support of wordpress.org and they will always be able to assist you.
The third and the most important reason for choosing WordPress is that they offer a wide range of themes and plugins, which clearly means that you just have to install the theme and the plugin as per your requirement without any coding and you are good to go. If you want you can easily purchase their party themes and plugins and upload them in order to use. You get complete and easy documentation along with video tutorials for these premium themes that will help you in setting up your Free Best Blogging Platforms.
Conclusion
At last, we just wanted to say that there are various Blogging Platforms available, but if you are looking for a long-term blog, you must go for WordPress.org
I would love to hear from you whether you find this guide helpful or not. you can post your comments, feedback, and queries about blogging.
Thanks and Best of luck for your first blog. ????
What is working for you in terms of blogging? Kindly let us know by commenting below.