5 Best Blogging Platforms for Beginners

A Content Management System (CMS) is the blogging platform for beginners. You don’t need to have any idea what HTML is and you don’t need any web design skills. It allows new bloggers to set up a blog with a minimal amount of hassle, usually for free. We’ve drawn together the best five blogging platforms for beginners and listed its advantages below the description.

Take a look so you can make the right blogging decision.

Blogging

WordPress

WordPress is the undisputed world leader in blogs and static websites. Did you know one out of every six websites in existence is made using the WordPress platform?

It uses a number of templates to customise each blog, many of which are free. It’s an open source platform, so anyone with coding skills can manipulate it in whatever way they please. It’s also search engine optimised, so you can ensure you rank highly on the search engines.

There’s a knowledge base filled with guides from users and developers. It’s not just filled with the basics of blogging. You can find out more about coding and playing with a blog’s features at the code level.

It’s a great introduction to the world of blogging because it’s free and there’s lots of room for error. It doesn’t start and end with beginners, though, the fact it’s an open source platform provides ample room for intermediate bloggers to start delving into the more advanced features of blogging.

Advantages

  • Free to use.
  • Simple.
  • Drag and drop interface.
  • Search engine optimisation.
  • Plugins to customise with.
  • Themes to enhance your look.
  • Large knowledge base for beginners.

Blogger

Blogger comes in at a close second to WordPress. The only thing it lacks is the ability to optimise it for the search engines. It uses a drag and drop feature and it’s simple to set up. Most CMS platforms use the drag and drop function, so this is essential.

You get a free domain name with every account. This is a great attraction if you’re someone who wants to try out blogging without spending lots of money on it.

Blogger is under the control of Google so it has the advantage of being indexed more quickly than websites from other platforms.

Advantages

  • Simple to set up.
  • Simple design.
  • Free domains and hosting.
  • Highly useful for personal stories and travel blogs.

SquareSpace

SquareSpace has lots of different features. It has more default features than any of the other CMS. Unlike other platforms, you don’t have to install lots of plugins to get the level of usability you desire.

Like other platforms, it uses the drag and drop function for simplicity. It has a range of image manipulation tools, including a grid function to help you see how they’ll look when the blog goes live. You can also target your blog towards specific goals. One example is you can mould your blog to make it monetised.

Advantages

  • Free domain name with every account.
  • Ideal for eCommerce sites and monetised blogs.
  • Good paid support.
  • Lots of free apps.
  • Detailed design tools.
  • Unlimited bandwidth and online space with certain paid packages.

Tumblr.com

This is another popular blogging platform. It’s more for the beginner who doesn’t want to commit large amounts of time to blogging, but still wants to experience it. It’s simple to create short blogs and it only takes a few minutes to start posting. Tumblr is similar to a social media website, so it’s easy to share your messages with a large audience.

There’s a handy mass editing feature available. If you want to change a word across a number of your blogs, you can do it from window without painstakingly crawling through each post. It saves on time and enables you to become a more efficient blogger.

It allows for a great deal of customisation and it’s entirely free to use. You can even post blogs through your email account.

Advantages

  • Free to set up.
  • Lots of design tools.
  • Apps to make micro blogging available from your phone and tablet.
  • Easily shareable.
  • Email posting.
  • Mass edit feature.
  • Shortened URL functions.

Blog.com

Blog.com provides you with a number of free tools you can use to change your blog and make it your own. It’s a blogging platform which is steadily growing in popularity. You’ll find a large base of articles showing you how to do things. You can find a fair number of free apps, as well as a number of shared apps.

Advantages

  • You can have more than one free blog up and running at the same time.
  • Free domain names with every account.
  • Free tools to design and alter your blog.
  • Innovative privacy settings.
  • Search engine friendly.
  • Space for affiliate adverts on your blog.

Author bio: Korah Morrison, student at UCLA, Los Angeles, and experienced writer at http://uk.college-paper.org/.

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