And here, The Best Blog Platforms talk starts.
Previous Week: How to start a Fashion Blog
Congratulations. If you came this far to read my post about blogging, you finally made your decision about starting a new life. I warned you about the hard parts of this business in my previous post and probably we’ll talk more about those hard things in the future as well.
Your focus is on something else right now and that is to find the best way to start your beautiful blog. (I assume you already find your kickass domain name.) As long-time blogger, I must have tried almost all of them since 2005 (I’m not kidding, I started blogging when I was 18 with MSN’s Spaces). I feel old now or you can simply see me as really a tech girl since I was out of high school. Space Blog, Blogspot (Blogger), WordPress, Tumblr, TextPattern, Medium, Squarespace etc… are all blog services that I used for all different sorts of blogs.
The Best Blog Platforms You Wanna Check Out
1. Blogspot:
This is my all-time favorite. I don’t know why but I really love the nostalgic sense of the very simple design of it. You can not only use their very humble themes but also reskin with your own designer friends who appear to know about front-end development. Voila, you got your blog with the big SEO support, directly integrated your Google Analytics and Adsense courtesy of Google. Why? Because the blogger is the free service of Google. (take a look at my old personal blog supported by Blogspot. Sorry, it’s in Turkish but you can see how simple the design is.)
Advantage: SEO friendly, Analytics, and Adsense (You should know this, it is very hard to register Adsense with a newly started blogger unless you’re a Blogspot user) easily integrated into your blog.
Disadvantages: It’s hard to play with design. There are not many plug-ins that support Blogspot. There are some but you may struggle to find what exactly looking for.
2. Tumblr:
I have a Tumblr blog for almost every business of mine. Tumblr is more and more another social media microblogging service (like Twitter) for me than blog software. I generally suggested Tumblr for people who are more artistic approaches to content. If you want to start your blog as more of a portfolio, I’ll tell you, go with Tumblr.
Advantage: SEO friendly, Analytics, and Adsense (You should know this, it is very hard to register Adsense with a newly started blogger unless you’re a Blogspot user) easily integrated into your blog.
Disadvantages: It’s hard to play with design. There are not many plug-ins that support Blogspot. There are some but you may struggle to find what exactly looking for.
3. WordPress: – The Best Blogging Platform
WordPress is probably the first platform I suggest to a starter. It is very easy to use and so functional because of the millions of plugins developed and provided by independent developers. You can find so many free plugins but you’ll also find premium more professional ones. Try to avoided subscription services since you’re a beginner. I believe you’ll find something that is free and good enough to cover your needs.
WordPress is also great because you can find many free designs and until you become a very serious and legit blogger you’ll manage with the free plugins and widgets.
Since there is a ton of bloggers out there who use WordPress, It’s the easiest job to find someone to help with WordPress’ technical and design problems. Any kind of developer easily figures things out related to WordPress. If you are very helpless from a technical standpoint, you can always use services like freelancers.com or upwork.com. Read the separate post about how to hire technical help. (Hang on! working on it.) Or you can start to work with a blogger agency like Creawit NYC. And I am co-founder of Creawit NYC, please reach out if you need help.
4. Squarespace:
Probably the sexiest service above all is Squarespace. Everything looks extremely effortless, modern and easy with Squarespace. They’ve done a great job with their late advertisements.
But there is one or two staff that I keep hearing about Squarespace. First of all, It is not free. You have to pay $16 every month(or $12 if you use this link ), and yes you get free technical help in return whenever you have a problem. But the thing is Squarespace is not independent as WordPress. When you want to add a new feature to your design, you have to contact support. And most of the time, they can’t solve your problems that easily because they have everything standardized. Even though I hear incredible comments about their customer service, some people still look for that independence that WordPress has.
5. Medium:
You’ve never imagined how was Alley Girl’s first design.
Um, there was no design.
I simply started it on Medium. The medium was a thing at that time around. Everybody has gone back to writing again (felt like 2008 or something again). Medium is generally used by professionals who talk about their business life or write an out life in general. It’s the best and simplest blog concept if you just want to write about personal opinions on things in life. Medium is definitely going to be a challenge to use if you are planning to have a street-style blog. But I think Medium can be a great fit if you just write about high fashion, fashion news and so on ( I can already see next Vanessa Friedman).
Summary: I know, It sounds scary if you are not an internet person. You may start to be panicking about what I did not pick the best blog platforms or so… Don’t worry. Just do it.
And here is a tip from the alley girl: If I start to blog today with no money, I’ll go with WordPress, my second choice would be Squarespace. I use Tumblr as more Social Media channel than a blog platform, so I suggest you do that. You can link your Instagram, Twitter to your Tumblr. If you use tags and hashtags wisely you’ll get attention on Tumblr, too.
I hope you enjoy my best blog platforms article.
Next Week: A New Start on Social Media…
