Posts tagged Pingdom

First, an orientation.  With the many, many blogging platforms that exist, how does one begin to choose the one that’s right for them?  If we used The Pareto Principle (the “80/20 Rule”) to sum up platform usage, we could say that 80% of the people use 20% of the blogging platforms.  With Blogger and WordPress being the two big kids on the block, I might argue that our principle is more like 95/5.  We could argue the actual numbers, but you get the point.

Let’s start with a look at a review from PC World.  This is a simple view into an in-depth review of the top five platforms.  Again, Blogger and WordPress appear, rated as the top free services, along with three for-fee sites: TypePad, Tripod, and Squarespace.

If you are just starting to blog, or simply want a free and easy-to-manage environment, Blogger or WordPress is the answer.  In the next post, I’ll talk more about free, hosted blogging vs. self-hosting your own blog site.  There are of course pros and cons to each, depending on your own expectations of what you want to get out of your blogging experience.

Consistent with The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit’s mission to provide differing perspectives, let’s look at a blog called Royal Pingdom.  They took a run at understanding which blogging platforms are in use at the Top 100 sites as ranked by Technorati.  Again, this may be of interest only to those of you who either have a considerable amount of experience, or like me, expect to have considerable experience in the future.  Regardless, it is an interesting perspective.

For those of you with more of a web programming bent, here’s a link to Top 10 Free Blogging Platforms & Features for Web Designers.  Several of the usual suspects appear, but as you can see, there are yet more.  Again, there really is something for everyone based on the number and varied offerings available.  It’s simply a matter of finding what’s right for you.  

 This has been a lot of words to simply say, “Get Started!”  Start simple, evolve, enjoy and excel.

Dave