OtherNovember 6, 2014
What blogs are meant to do?
- To educate
- To Inform
- To establish worth
- To inspire
- To attract
- To convert
- To earn
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Isn’t it enough to know why do you need a blog either for yourself or for your business? A well-maintained blog, studded with unique and fresh content on regular basis, helps a winning situation for a business by inspiring the readers, satisfying Google, winning over new visitors, and retaining the loyal customers.
It’s no more tough to create and manage blogs, as there are efficient content management systems, applications, and tools available with different platforms. Being open source and easy to customize, most of the blogging platforms offer free basic plan. Here is given a list of the top blogging platforms to help the newbie bloggers and the e-business owners at startup.
1. Wordpress: A Free And Easy To Manage CMS
If you know PHP and MySQL, then WordPress, an open source platform, provides an efficient CMS to setup your blog. Stats reveal that almost 60 million websites are based on this platform with hundreds and thousands of free WordPress plugins available to enhance its functionalities. WordPress.com also offers free website hosting for the startups, but the business plan is charged at $299 per anum. The latter option is good for the serious business owners because there are no ads, site address is customized, and the theme is premium with unlimited space.
2. Squarespace: An Affordable Option To Support E Business
Other than creating a blog, this platform is adorned with ecommerce functionalities, so helps establishing an e store with great ease. Start selling your products and receive payments immediately after adding the store. The custom domain is free for annual account holders. The basic plan is charged at $8/month while the business plan is available against $24/month.
3. Movable Type: A Content Publishing Solution
This blogging platform helps creating and managing the content with features like advanced dashboard, user profile management, and self-service support. The cost of 5-user license of Movable Type is $595.
4. Textpattern: A Free Platform In 40 Languages
This free blogging platform helps creating and publishing the content with ease. The admin is given complete control of XHTML and CSS. The plugins to enhance its functionalities, active community support, and availability in 40 languages make it a preferable choice of bloggers.
5. Typepad: A Simple Solution For Simple Blogs
This platform provides simple solution for the blogs, to keep them running. It has a theme builder and the available themes are customizable. The initial plan is charged at $8.95/month.
6. Blogger: It’s A Google’s Platform!
If you have Google’s account, then start using this platform, with no other requirement needed. Pick the template of your choice and customize that as per your needs. Although, it’s a simple platform, lacking many features, but you can add Google tools with ease. It’s a free blogging platform.
7. Tumblr: It’s A Yahoo’s Free Platform!
Combining social media and micro-blogging, Tumblr helps sharing the stories adorned with animation, music, pictures, videos, etc. There are free themes and custom domains available in this platform.
8. Weebly: An Affordable Platform To Build Blog Quickly
Weebly helps building the blog easily and quickly with drag and drop interface. Free hosting and easy to customize free templates make it a good choice for starters. Weebly offers a free basic plan while the premium plan is charged at $4/month.
9. Postagon: A Clean Platform Purely For Readers And Writers
This platform is equipped with the basic features to create a clean blogging platform. It’s basically meant to facilitate the writers (getting started with their blogs) and readers (looking for fresh content) with efficient commenting system, RSS feeds, and email alerts. It also offers customized domain names with ad-free version. The per month cost of this blogging platform is $4.99.
10. Anchor: Lightweight Platform For Latest Browsers
This open source blogging platform enables you to customize the content with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. The themes are simple and editing is made possible through drag and drop feature. The cost of this platform is $5, which is actually a donation.
11. Roon: Helps Maintaining Multiple Blogs
Use Rich text mode or Markdown to write blogs in this platform, or you can switch between different modes. A single account could be used to manage multiple blogs in Roon. The basic plan is free; however, the custom domains are provided with premium add-ons and custom analytics.
12. Medium: Collaborative Platform To Find Audience
If you want to find your audience by sharing stories and unique ideas, then Medium could be a good choice. Here, the audience is encouraged to share ideas and give feedback. Insight of the audience is also gained before the content is published.
13. Wardrobe: Simple Administration With Focused Writing
This blogging application allows scheduling the post publishing. You can tag post for different groups and categories. The focus of the application is purely writing, so the administration is as simple as possible. The themes are kept simple to incorporate into any design.
14. Ghost: Open Source Publishing Platform
This blogging platform allows writing in Markdown with available writing previews. It’s purely for content publishing with Ghost editor interface and many available themes to choose from. The software is free, but the hosting charges for a single blog with 10,000 views are $5 a month.
15. Sett: To Engage Readers
This is a unique free platform, aimed at providing more readers at a blog. The readers’ engagement is made possible by focusing other Sett members having the same interest. The platform claims to provide 98% more commenting once a blog be shifted to Sett.
16. Dropplets: Focuses Design And Usability
This blogging platform offers offline writing and then uploading the content to get published. It emphasizes design and usability and provides just one free template by default. More templates are available as paid.
17. Silvrback: With Dual User Interface Patterns
It’s a beautiful blogging platform, providing dual user interface patterns. Classic Silvrback and Alpha Gorilla, the two interface patters of Silvrback, have different front-end blog as well as the back end editing. Among other features, include customizable colors, video and iframe embeds, email subscriptions, and top of the list is smooth admin handling. The annual cost of the platform is $29.99.
18. Pressmatica: A Streamlined Platform For Individuals
This free platform lacks any advanced blogging options, rather has simple interface, useful for individuals. All it makes the platform simple and easy to use.
19. Jux: Perfect For Visual Blogs
This blogging platform provides a modern approach to deliver visual message. The full screen display of the content enhances the resulting impact. Make a good mix of text and visuals and use any of the 6 available templates of Jux to share them. It’s free to use.
Although, the list of blogging platforms is long enough, but few are shared in the lines above to help new bloggers and the e-store planners. What’s your opinion of the above platforms and applications? Feel free to share in the comments below.