It surprises a lot of people when you say there are more than one platforms out there for blogging. WordPress has become the standard and lets be fair it suits most people, but it’s worth knowing about alternative options before you start a blog you plan to run for years. While I haven’t covered every possible option, these are the big four that offer the most to a Blogger.

WordPress

Basically the standard platform now, it’s got a huge community with thousands of templates and hundreds of plugins. It’s easy to install and the support is great. For the new to average user, I’d suggest this book to push forward. It covers set up, customisations and how to market your blog. There is no doubt WordPress has the ability to be a very powerful option but only when you install several must have plugins.

Blogger

Free hosted blog or standalone software owned by Google as of 2003 (originally Pyra Labs). Community isn’t as big as that of WordPress, less plugins and templates but making strong headway since Google integrated it’s services fully. Perfect for single blogs but I would suggest you host the blog yourself. It gives you greater control over the software and makes it easier to have a unique domain name (a must if you plan on making money).

Drupal

Open Source CMS but suitable for blogging. Again not as many resources as WordPress but comes with some pretty powerful features. While not strictly blogging software it is one of it’s many possible applications. The official website recommends it be used as;

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

The impressive features that can be added by plugins include;

• Content Management Systems
• Blogs
• Collaborative authoring environments
• Forums
• Peer-to-peer networking
• Newsletters
• Podcasting
• Picture galleries
• File uploads and downloads

I know I’m giving Drupal more post space than the others but it’s abilities are quite extensive and well worth the extra space it’s getting here. While it doesn’t have as many available resources as WordPress it does come with an impressive range of themes

Because Drupal is able to do so much it might be worth investing in a useful guide book, this one is well rounded and easy to understand.

Movable Type

Movable Type offers an alternative to Drupal, not as advanced but more honed to a bloggers needs. You can read up on WordPress Versus Movable Type. There is currently a free version available or you can delve into the new Movable Type Open Source project. At the time of writing the open source project (and version 4) is in beta stage but it looks very promising. If you run multiple blogs you’ll find this very useful. Creating a new blog is quick and simple and every one you start can be controlled from a single control panel.

Well that about covers it, hopefully now you have a better understanding of the other options available to you and are a little more informed.

Are there any other platforms you would recommend?
Have you tried any other than WordPress? What are your points of view?

Leave a comment and let me know!