Start a Blog – Picking the Right Platform/Content Management System (CMS)

Now that you’ve decided on a topic for your blog, you need to decide on the platform/content management system (CMS) you’re going to use to get your writings out to the rest of the world.

Much like selecting a topic, there are two main schools of thought on choosing the CMS you should use to get your blog up and running:

• Use a free blog service like Blogger or WordPress.com that, in addition to allowing you to post your articles, also hosts your blog and has the capability to let you forward to your own unique domain
• Buy your own unique domain and economy hosting, and use a free CMS like WordPress.org or Drupal to post your articles

By using one of the free services, it’s possible for you to avoid spending any money while you start your blog. These sites are easy to use and allow you to get everything up and running relatively quickly.

Additionally, Blogger and WordPress.com have useful features already built in, and in most cases, will allow you to “forward” your posts to a domain you already own, which helps with search engine optimization (SEO).

Finally, Blogger and WordPress.com allow you to relatively painlessly transfer all of your information to your own domain, hosting, and CMS at some point in the future, should you choose to do so.

Unfortunately, there are two big problems with using these free services:

1. Very limited. In many instances, you have to choose between a few pre-selected themes and don’t have a lot of options when it comes to expanding the functionality of your site – i.e. adding polls, widgets, and/or advertising.
2. If they host it, they own it. If all of a sudden your free provider decides your site violates their terms of service they can pull the site and delete all of your work. Or, if at some point down the road, you’d like to sell your blog, you’re going to run into issues, and likely will not be able to sell.

Because it’s possible to get a domain and hosting for pretty cheaply, and very easy to install and set up your CMS – even if you’re not technically savvy – I recommend that you go ahead and do this from the very beginning and completely avoid the free blogging services.

(I use GoDaddy.com, pay $10.99 per year for my domains, and spend $3.99 per month for economy hosting. Like I said, we’re not talking about a lot of money, but, we’ll get more into this in the next post.)

As for the CMS, I highly recommend using the open source (read: free) program WordPress.

Now I know this might be a bit confusing because I’m referencing WordPress twice.  Just remember that WordPress.com is the free blogging SERVICE, meaning it hosts your blog as well, while WordPress.org is where you get the free blogging CMS.

WordPress is extremely easy to install and use, has amazing functionality, and is constantly being improved.  Because WordPress is an open source program, there are literally thousands of programmers working to make it better.

Additionally, there are thousands of free plug-ins and themes currently available for WordPress.  These plug-ins and themes allow you to make your blog unique, as well as help with SEO, social marketing, and monetization, among other things.

I highly recommend that you head over to WordPress.org and take a look around.  I’m sure once you do, you’ll be sold on the idea of using WordPress as your blog’s CMS.

What are your thoughts?  What do you think about WordPress?  Do you use something different for your blog?  Please leave your comments below!

Resources:

WordPress Download – WordPress.org, NOT WordPress.com
WordPress Installation Guide
GoDaddy.com – domain and hosting services

Per the new FTC regulations, the above GoDaddy links are affiliate links, and should you purchase anything after clicking the link, I will receive a small commission.