Many of you who are familiar with blogging, when told about blogging the first thing that comes in mind is a blog on Google Blogger. It was a purchased by Google in 2003 started by Pyra Labs. It became the most popular platform for blogging. However, Blogger has some limitations like:
- You can’t customize much in respect of appearance or features. You have to do a lot of research if you are not a pro.
- It is hosted and owned by Google. They can shut it down any time. They can act and remove your blog on complain without any warning. Copyright violation, DMCA notice any such notice to Google will result in immediate removal of your blog.
- The most important of all is Blogger is outdated and not a preferential service of Google. They are not keen in updating the service with latest advancement in blogging and make it more user and customization friendly.
In between a lot of alternative services flourished. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others. Google Blogger is used mostly for regular blogging only. However, these services are referred as Content Management Service (CMS). These are used to create a lot many different sort of website than just a blogging website. One may see the current market share of all the Content Management Services CMSs here.
You may see WordPress has developed as a giant for CMS. Drupal and Joomla both give software which could be easily installed on hosting environment to create your website and comes with Open-source License. Hence, one could customize it easily. However, WordPress provides both Google Blogger type blogging platform where you can sign up and start blogging and Open-Source Licensed software which you could install on self-hosting environment like Drupal and Joomla.
WordPress blogging platform is available at www.WordPress.com. It is popularly referred as WordPress.COM. The self-hosted blogging software could be downloaded at www.wordpress.org. This is referred commonly as WordPress.ORG or self-hosted wordpress.
Just like Google Blogger, WordPress.com has some restrictions. However, their blogging environment is much more advanced than Google Blogger. Customization and many add-on services are allowed as premium services on payment. There are almost 60 Million blogs hosted on WordPress.com. If you are a novice and want to create a wonderful looking blog where you can start writing without nothing to worry about, choose WordPress.com.
WordPress.ORG gives all the capability of customization and personalization. The customization and personalization could be achieved easily by more than 2,500 free themes and 30,000 free plugins. In order to set up your WordPress.ORG blog, you need to get a hosting account at HostGator, BlueHost, JustHost or other such hosting company. Plus you need your own domain name which you can get at GoDaddy. Most of the hosting company give domain name at the time of registering for their service. But, it’s better that you use your own domain name from GoDaddy. As it will be easy if you wish to change hosting company in future. In later articles I will give your more details about blogging with WordPress. Enjoy!
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