What’s a Blog?!
“Did she say Dog? What’s a Dog? Who doesn’t know what a dog is?!” Okay, so I do understand what a DOG is, but a BLOG is a creature completely unknown. That confused pup above might as well be me. I’ve never followed other bloggers or sold anything on Etsy, so I figure I’m a pretty good candidate to experience what it takes to go from zero to sixty in the online arts marketplace. Time to psyche myself up; I can do this! Feel free to watch me stumble, I’ll stick up signs along the way warning of tree roots (or whatever the blogging equivalent is). So, starting at the beginning, I guess I should start by choosing a blogging platform?
“Wait a minute”, you must be thinking, “I’m reading this on a blog, so obviously you’ve chosen a platform!” Blogging about blogging, it’s so meta! So yes, you’re right, I’ve made my choice, but I want to share the whole process, so I’ve moved my early notes here, where it’s easy to access for anyone interested. Speaking of my early notes…
Holy Toledo, there is a ton to figure out when choosing a blogging platform! I had no idea. “Well obs”, you’re thinking, since starting from scratch is kind of the point of this journey! So, where to begin? Seeing as this project is for college credit, I began my research with the university library, looking for scholarly sources. When you search for “Blogging Platforms” through a university library database, you get articles like “A Multiple-Layer Machine Learning Architecture for Improved Accuracy in Sentiment Analysis.” Hmmmm, not quite what I had in mind. However “Blogging for Dummies” also popped up. Sold! It has a publication date of 2019, so current-ish.
While I wait for my book to appear, I turned to, you guessed it, the interweb! There are lots of reviewers out there, but how do you know you can trust what they say? I tried to address that by avoiding anyone selling blogging software, and focused instead on tech writers, content marketers and people who blog extensively. Here’s the top 5 from a sampling of that lot. You can see a few options repeating:
Quicksprout:
- WordPress
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Medium
Techradar:
- Blogger
- Wix
- WordPress
- Jekyll
- Tumblr
Creativebloq
- Wix
- Weebly
- Substack
- WordPress
- Joomla
Neil Patel
- WordPress
- Wix
- Medium
- Squarespace
- Blogger
So library (check), internet (check). Time to access my Personal Learning Network! (Cue super hero music). My P.L.N. are folks I know who are connected to, or knowledgeable about, whatever topic I’m exploring. They give me the inside scoop on an issue, and if they don’t have insider knowledge, they guide me toward a reliable source. My favorite PLNer in the tech world is ESPRESSO FIEND!, here forever after known as E.F.
E. F. has worked in tech for nearly 30 years, and started his own blog a couple years ago. He is fabulous at research, and applies it to every interest in his life – from American hazelnut production to cordless vacuums (which comes in handy when you spill said hazelnuts, they’re tiny!). I knew he’d be up on the ins-and-outs of the blogging world, so we sat down to chat, espressos in hand.
E.F. Explained that before you can choose a platform, you have to think about your particular situation. Do you need a free platform or are you willing to pay a fee? Are you blogging solely for personal expression, or do you want to sell a product? Do you want an all-in-one service or one that can be hosted at an outside company? Do you want the flexibility of being able to move your content in the future, or are you willing to trade your content for a built in audience? How well does the platform handle Search Engine Optimization? Do you care about Green Hosting? AAGGGGHHHH! My head is spinning, so let’s stop and break this down.
- Free or Fee? There are lots of free blogging platforms. The ones I most commonly find recommended are Wix, WordPress, Weebly and Medium. The upside is, of course, no cost to you. The downside is advertisements on your blog. If the budget is tight and you want low maintenance and ease of use, then these products might be right for you. If you want total control and no ads on your blog, then keep reading.
- Personal Expression or Selling Product? Are you blogging as a way to share your thoughts, perspectives and daily experiences, or are you hoping to monetize your blog by selling a product or service, either yours or someone else’s?
- If self expression is your main goal, then the question may be how you best express yourself, through words or images? Medium is a blogging platform geared toward readers and writers, and they offer free accounts. If you’re more of a visual person, Webflow offers a blogging environment for more visual thinkers, no coding required. Squarespace is often cited as having the most visually appealing templates of all the blogging platforms, and if you’re really minimalistic about text, there’s always Instagram. Tumblr is also used for image heavy blogging, and offers more opportunity to include text while also navigating users directly to your content (unlike Instagram, which uses an algorithm to determine the order in which users see content).
- Show me the money! If you plan for blogging to be your golden goose, you’ll need a platform that offers plug-ins and/or the ability to connect with third party monetization services for selling ads, ebooks, subscription, member services, etc. Most of the free platforms offer avenues for monetization, but usually not at the “free” level: you’ll have to bump up to a paid subscription to access those options. WordPress is often cited as the most versatile platform when it comes to monetization options.
- All-in-one or Separate Services? Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Linked In and Medium are all-in-one, or proprietary, services that offer both software and hosting, no need to go elsewhere. Sounds good, right? And it is, with a few caveats. Some of the proprietary options can make it challenging to move your content should you decide to down the road. For instance if you think in the future you may decide to sell ebooks from your blog, but your current platform doesn’t offer that widget, then porting your existing content to a new platform can be daunting. WordPress offers both all-in-one and software only options. Should you choose WordPress software only, then you’ll need to choose a hosting service as well (WordPress with Hostinger was a common recommendation). The only other recommended software-only service I learned about was Ghost, which seems primarily a developer focused platform.
- Future Flexibility or Instant Audience? Platforms like LinkedIn and Medium are proprietary services that offer an instant audience for their users. This can be a great way to build your audience and connect with like minded people, especially when just starting out. However in some cases your content will then become the property of the platform, and taking it with you should you decide to leave becomes difficult.
- SEO or No? SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s basically the things you can do to optimize your blog so that search engines, like Google or Bing, find your content more readily and pull you to the top of search results. It’s kind of like riding a bike on a busy road: you want cars to see you more easily, right? So you might put on a bright shirt and attach a light to your seat-post. If you don’t want your blog to be buried at the bottom of a pile of search results, make sure your platform knows how to put on a bright shirt! In my research, WordPress, Squarespace and Joomla were all cited as SEO proficient.
- Green or Mean? Green hosting services are something you might consider if you decide to go the separate service route. Green hosts work to reduce the impact they have on the environment with environmentally friendly practices. The question is, what does “green” mean? The top green hosts utilize a variety of practices, from purchasing carbon offsets and reducing energy consumption to recycling old hardware and planting trees. They all have their own way of interpreting “green”, so you may want to dig deeper to determine which one is right for you. The most commonly recommended Green-hosting Companies I found were GreenGeeks, iPage, HostPapa, A2 Hosting and DreamHost.
So there it is! This is the sum total of my acquired knowledge about blogging platforms thus far! I hope you’ve found this information useful or interesting. Are you wondering which one I chose? Read on!
My options became narrower when I realized that Green Hosting was possible. My hope was to find an easy all-in-one platform with strong SEO capabilities and robust green policies, and my top choice of the all-in-ones was Squarespace. It has a reputation for ease of use and SEO facility, however it’s green policies are nothing to write (or blog) home about. In fact it’s been nearly impossible to discover just what those policies are! I scoured their website to no avail, then waited 25 minutes to “chat” with a Customer Care rep. He was very friendly, but provided little worthwhile detail. From him I learned they: compost and recycle, donate leftover meals and equipment when they can and use reusable dishes for their meals. Ummmm, that’s nice and all, but what about your energy sources? When I asked about that I was told “the information I’ve provided is the extent of the information that anyone on our support team can speak to” and then offered to escalate my ticket to another team. Wow. Okay, so if green energy is so low on their list that they don’t mention it on their website or in customer support material, then this is probably not the company for me.
WIX is an all-in-one platform that has some green initiatives (they run on Google’s 100% renewable cloud infrastructure) but aside from that I could not find any other environmental policy information on their website. I’ve also read from online reviewers (and heard from E.F.) that it can be extremely difficult to move your content from WIX should you decide to down the road. I’m a big fan of flexibility, so to get that and environmental responsibility, I’m going with…
WORDPRESS and (insert Green Hosting company here)! Okay, so yes, now I need to take a deeper look at the Green Hosting companies, but at least I’ve decided on my blogging software. I hope this post has provided an inside look into the first steps of setting up a blog. Be sure to check back if you’d like to read more about choosing a Green Hosting company. Thanks for stopping by!
Photo by Michelle Tresemer on Unsplash
