Following on from the first post in my blogging series Building a Blog I’m just going to take a  quick look at some of the blogging platforms you can choose to manage your blog. The most common platform that I have come across if WordPress. I haven’t really used WordPress to managing any of my blogs. I have installed it and downloaded it but I plumped for Google’s blogger mainly because of how easy it was to setup and how little I had to do to start blogging.

WordPress definitely has a lot of advantages you can download it for free from here http://wordpress.org/ You can also find some useful documentation for installing and configuring and some links to potential hosts for you blog. There will be a cost for the hosting.

There are lots of plugin and themes that you can download for free and there some that you can pay for depending on your preference.These can all be used to improve the functionality and services that your blog provides. As I said WordPress is the most popular blog platform out there so you can get a lot of support from people using it to host their blogs and websites.

I opted for Google's’ Blogger.com when I started this blog, I did because at the time it seemed like the easiest way for me to do it. It didn’t cost anything to setup or host and a for a small fee you get a domain name integrated with Google apps.

Thus far I have not had any problems with it. It is all hosted and housed by Google which does mean its not as flexible as WordPress but it has suited me fine.

If I was starting again now I would put more time and effort into WordPress but as my blog seems to be doing OK on Google I have no intention yet to migrate…For now anyway, maybe at a later date I will attempt to migrate it.

What do you think, what’s your preferred blogging platform and why?

If you want to read more about building a successful blog this is a really good book with some really good tips in it ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income