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Best Blogging Software
By Miles Evans
The blogging platform wars are getting really interesting and
much of the discussion I find myself in lately revolves around
what is happening with various CMS systems. The market can
essentially be defined into 3 major camps: remotely hosted, self
hosted, and community based systems. I have used pretty much
every blogging platform available and each of them has its ups
and downs. In this article I will cover the best options for
each area taking into account price, usability, market share and
of course SEO potential.
All of these products are either open source, completely frëe or
have a functional frëe version.
Remotely Hosted Blogging Software
(Note: I cannot really recommend any of these from an SEO stand
point since optimizing a domain you do not own or control is
obviously not a good marketing plan.)
Blogger
Blogger is completely frëe and currently owns the majority of
the remotely hosted user base, but not by a landslide. Bought
out by Google in 1999, Blogger essentially fired up the blogging
trend we see today. It is by far the easiest overall solution to
use and, if you are a novice user looking to throw up some
recipes or poetry, this is for you. Blogger is completely frëe
and includes some great features like comments, photo blogging,
and a basic community feel with user profiles. Because it is so
dumbed down there are some features you may not find with
Blogger that are only available through 3rd party add-ons. As a
side note Blogger weblogs do quite well in the search engines
and this was recently exploited with it being the first choice
for sp@m blogs or splogs. A splog is a weblog used for the sole
purpose of gaining inbound links or generating thousands of
keyword stuffed pages with Adsense and the like. The recent
Google Jagger update cleared a large portion of this up. Frëe.
Typepad
Released in 2003, Typepad is a product of Sixapart, the makers
of Movable Type. It is largely based on MT but there are some
major enhancements and differences. Your blog can accomodate one
or more photo albums with auto thumbnail generation. You can
easily add music, books, and other media to Typelists, which
grab a thumbnail from Amazon and other retailers for easy
displaying in your sidebar. Typepad is also a great deal more
technical than Blogger so a bit of HTML know-how is recommended.
On that note, editing your blog to look the way you want is also
quite easy and Typepad blogs are known for being very
eye-pleasing, intuitive and easy to navigate. In Sixapart's
business model, Typepad is aimed at regular home and small
business users while Movable Type is targeted at largër
businesses or for internal intranets. Price: Basic, $4.95 a
month; Premium, $8.95 to $14.95 a month.
Xanga
These guys originated back in 1999 as a site for sharing book,
music and movie reviews. Although it quickly morphed into a full
blown blogging tool, Xanga still maintains the ability to run a
powerful review site. Xanga pulls data from several retailers
like Amazon.com including thumbnails, pricing and a cover. The
software also is very usable by novices with a powerful WYSIWYG
editor allowing for easy HTML editing, adding smilies, links,
and other symbols. By using Blog rings it is also easy to
interface with Xanga's other 3 million users to share interests,
ideas, and of course traffïc. Xanga comes in a frëe and $25
flavor.
Mentions:
Blogsome,
Blogster,
MindSay,
Multiply
Self Hosted Blogging Software
WordPress
WordPress originally began as a mod of an older open source
package known as B2. WP is MT's biggest competition and is often
the bain of endless Wordpress vs Movabletype style threads
around the internet. Although launched just over a year or so
ago WP has really taken the blogosphere by storm. And with good
reason - Wordpress is completely frëe under GNU licensing and is
packed with many features you will not find anywhere else. It is
also much easier to install and get blogging for novice users
and has a very large and helpful community. WP runs on PHP/mySQL
and is quite scalable judging from some of the very large and
trafficked sites I see using it. It also sports utilities to
import files from Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter,
Blogger, and B2. Wordpress recently upped the ante when Yahoo
recently included them on their hostíng packages, in addition to
MT. I have to admit I am finding myself more and more digging WP
and will likely convert Profitpapers to WP as I get time (it can
be a biznitch). Wordpress is frëe.
Movable Type
Aside from maybe
Greymatter
(the original open source blogging tool), Movabletype dominated
the blogging market share in 2002-2004. Released in late 2001,
Perl based Movable Type by Sixapart has maintained a large
portion of the blogging market share, due mainly to the fact
that there is a frëe version (supporting up to 3 weblogs) and
that it is incredibly powerful, intuitive and easy to customize.
Template driven Movable Type also sports one of the largest
communities of developers and blogging enthusiasts around,
meaning lots of support, idea sharing, and of course plugins.
Movable Type can be configured to dynamically generate HTML, PHP
or any other kind of pages you like, meaning it is incredibly
scalable, fast, and loved by spiders. It is perhaps the most
well known blogging software for SEO purposes and it is what
currently powers Profitpapers and several of my other projects.
Moveabletype is either Frëe with 3 authors, 1 weblog, and no
support or $69.95 with unlimited weblogs, authors and full
support.
Textpattern
Textpattern is the brainchild of Dean Allen and was written to
ease publishing of content for those not inclined to learn HTML.
Like WP and MT, Textpattern runs on PHP and mySQL for easy
administration, backups, and power. What really sets textpattern
apart from the others is the integration of Textile. Textile is
a tool for easily formatting content for those who do not know
HTML. WP & MT have modules for textile as well but it is native
to the Textpattern system. Another bonus of the app is its
superior handling of comment sp@m due to its smaller market
share. On the blogs I maintain running WP and MT, I often find
myself clearing out sp@m every day, whereas on some very busy
textpattern sites I receive only manual comment sp@m (not bot
driven). TP is open source.
Mentions:
Blosxom,
LifeType,
Serendipity
Community Based Blogging Software
Slash
Waaaaay back in 1997, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda launched a website
known as Chips & Dips, supplied via his student account at Hope
College in Michigan. In 1999 Andover.net acquired Slashdot.
Shortly after, the underlying code was released as open source
software called Slash. Like Movable Type and Greymatter, Slash
runs on Perl, but it also has established hooks into MySQL and a
very strong track record of scaling to enormous traffïc levels.
To give you an idea, the term 'slashdotted' originated from
acquiring a link on this nöw infamous and very popular tech news
website - and consequently watching your servers melt. If you
have nevër messed around with Slash, you really should as it is
quite a powerful platform. Slash is open source.
Scoop
Another well known Perl based community blogging software is
Scoop. Scoop is the software that powers Kuro5shin, DailyKos and
many other busy community weblogs. Scoop took the Slashdot idea
and expanded on it, making the discussion rather than the news
the focus of the application. Where Slashdot entries tend to
have a link with added commentary pointing readers off the site,
Scoop points to stories written by members of the community
keeping the reader within your own weblog. Scoop is also well
known for handling large volumes of traffïc and a large very
technical community. Scoop is frëe .
Drupal
Drupal is a well known open source community blogging platform
with a very large community of users and developers. Not only is
Drupal frëe but it is damn powerful. Instead of Perl, which is
quite hard to decode at times, even if you are a fluent coder,
Drupal uses a PHP/mySQL platform. Drupal is also a very
community focused application with a built-in forum, download
area, and hundreds of other home brewed mods and hacks. If you
are looking for a lot of functionality, give Drupal a look - the
project has become quite mature. It is also much easier to use
and customize than either Scoop or Slash. Drupal is also another
open source project.
Mentions:
LiveJournal, PHP Nuke
Here is a handy
blog software comparison chart courtesy of Online Journalism
Review. Here is
another from Weblog Industry Report which is much more
thorough and nostalgic yet a tad dated.
If you are into following the devlopment of open source CMS,
portal, blog and related systems you should chëck out
opensourcecms.
About The Author
Miles Evans writes for
ProfitPapers where he writes essays on organic SEO, SEM,
development and other equally fascinating subjects.
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