Where to blog: WordPress vs Typepad vs Blogger?

Blogging packages are like cars. They all get you from A to B but some get you there quicker, some are easier to drive, and they all come in lots of different colours. Things that all blogs have in common include:

Authoring, editing and publishing of entries – called posts which have the following:

  • Title (or headline)
  • Body – the main content of the post
  • Permalink, a unique website address that can be accessed and linked to directly
  • The date and time when the post as published

Blog posts can include the following:

  • Comments – visitors can post comments and discuss the posts (usually moderated by the blog owner)
  • Categories (and/or tags) – to help sort and categorise large numbers of posts (can also help with site navigation)
  • Trackback and or pingback – to show when other sites that link to that post

Blogs also produce one or more RSS feeds (for posts and usually comments) so that people and other sites can ’subscribe’ to the blog and automatically be updated when new posts are written. They should also allow you to create static pages (eg About or Contact pages). The structure of these can make the sites much more sophisticated and make them look less like blogs and more like traditional websites, albeit easy to update and with all the features of blogs.

The three most popular blogging platforms are WordPress, Typepad (based on software called Moveable Type) and Blogger (owned by Google)

  1. WordpressProbably the most widely used blogging platform that is available as hosted version (at Wordpress.com) where a free blog can be set up in a matter of minutes. A selection of 50-60 templates (themes) are available but only a handful can be adapted to change colours, header image (to include a logo etc). Additional widgets (like polls, links, tags and text) can be easily added into the sidebar(s) of the blog to help navigation and layout of the blog. Users might find the theme and The software can be installed on a webserver for free (it is open source) and then the options for adapting the blog are almost limitless with a really vibrant developer community producing thousands of themes and hundreds of plug-ins to add features to your blog.

    Pros:

    • Free blog can be started at Wordpress.com and you can point a website domain at your new site
    • Multiple ’static’ pages can be used to build flexible website structure
    • Themes can be made to look ‘un-blog-like’
    • Very effective Akismet spam comment protection
    • Lots of documentation, tutorials etc available
    • Useful, understandable stats available

    Cons:

    • Editing interface can be overwhelming at first for beginners
    • Free wordpress.com themes are not totally flexible and require paid upgrade and skills to change
    • Embedding code (eg google maps) into posts and pages can be restricted on Wordpress.com and the self install version without some additional plug-ins

    Examples:

    1. 10 Downing Street
    2. Podnosh.com
    3. BeVocal.org.uk
  2. TypePadTypepad is a more business focussed blogging engine running a number of high profile, high traffic sites. There is no free version of TypePad but a 14 day free trial is available and for around $15 per month an unlimited number of fully customisable blogs can be set up. Again once you have gone beyond the limitations of TypePad, the same software (http://www.movabletype.org/) can be installed on a webserver for free. Multiple blogs can be set-up from one account/installation, so additional sites can be set up with addresses like xxxx.typepad.com/blog1 xxxxtypepad.com/blog2

    Pros:

    • Easier interface for beginners than Wordpress
    • Designs can be tailored with a drag and drop interface as well as sidebar content

    Cons:

    • Smaller community of developers so not the ‘universal’ availability of solutions to problems
    • Domains always in the form xxxx.typepad.com/blog, forwarding does not mask the fact your blog is on TypePad
    • Spam comments not caught as well as Wordpress

    Examples:

    Typepad

    1. http://www.timesonline.typepad.com/comment/(in fact all the Times blogs)

    Moveable type

    1. Huffington Post
    2. Gizmodo
  3. BloggerThe odd one out of the three platforms discussed in that the software behind it is not ‘open’ and available to be developed, so there are limited options for expansion once you have reached the limits of what can be done at Blogger.com

    Pros:

    • Good integration with other Google products (photo sharing with Picasa etc)
    • Code can be inserted into the templates (eg Analytics) for quick fixes but could be difficult to maintain

    Cons:

    • Very ‘bloggy’ looking, limited themes for making a site look more like a traditional website
    • No onward path for development (only a hosted version available, no self install)
    • No development community per se, so lack of plug-ins and high quality themes
    • Static pages limited to ‘About’, unable to build static non-blog parts of a website

    Examples:

    1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
    2. http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/
    3. http://iaindale.blogspot.com/

    The good news is that even if you do start using one platform, you can import and export posts, pages and comments from one set-up to another (eg from TypePad to WordPress), but some things that you may have posted (eg pictures) may not transfer across.

  4. Resources