Top Ten Free Online Blogging Platforms

A blog is a great way to express your thoughts, create a web presence for your company and provide content to Internet users. If you’re planning to create a blog, but don’t wish to get into the hassles of hosting, developing and deploying it yourself, consider creating a blog at any of the free blogging platforms mentioned below. Such services offer a plethora of features and generally come with both free as well as paid plans.
Let’s look at the top 10 most popular online blog-publishing services.

1. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is perhaps the most feature-rich blogging service out there. It uses the popular open source web software WordPress, and offers many features in its free version — traffic stats, anti-spam filters, SEO, gorgeous themes and more.

If you choose to use WordPress.com, you’ll be in good company, as many popular blogs — including CNN’s Political Ticker, People Magazine’s Style Watch and Flickr — are on this platform.
If you need more than what the free version offers, you can opt for their premium features that include custom domains, upgraded web hosting resources and more. Whether you’re an expert blogger or a beginner, this ultimate blogging platform is a safe bet.

2. Blog.com

Blog.com is another popular WordPress-powered blogging platform. Just like other services, it has its own share of pros and cons. For a start, it offers many beautiful premium themes in its free accounts, as well as advanced plugins that one can expect only on a self-hosted blog. However, on the downside, the free service displays more ads as compared to WordPress.com. (But you can opt for paid upgrades to remove the advertisements.) The free storage space offered on Blog.com is 2GB in the basic plan, which is less compared to 3GB that WordPress.com gives its users.

3. Blogger

Google Blogger is a well-known blogging service that offers many features to its users. For example, Blogger comes with a Template Designer user interface that lets you tweak your blog’s appearance as much as you want. (However, the templates provided are, in my opinion, no match compared to WordPress themes.)

When it comes to ease of use, most beginners prefer Blogger as it offers a no-nonsense interface for administering your blog and top-notch integration with their Google account. Another great thing about Blogger is that it offers certain great features for free that you normally need to pay for in other blog-publishing services,  most noteworthy being the ability to set up custom domains without paying a cent.

4. TypePad Micro

TypePad Micro is another free blog-publishing service. The interface is easy to use, and you can import/export content from many other blogging platforms. However, in terms of add-ons and themes offered, TypePad Micro won’t satisfy even the most basic blogger. The cheapest paid plan begins at $8.95 per month and comes with additional themes, custom domain mapping, as well as technical support.

In an age where almost all blogging services are offering numerous features in their free versions, TypePad Micro seems to be lagging behind.

5. Jux

Jux is an innovative service that lets you easily share content online. Conventionally speaking, it’s not a blogging service like the ones previously mentioned, however, it has a lot of the same functionalities. Rather, Jux lets you create your own microblogging site for sharing your content. By default, Jux templates don’t have the native sidebars and other widgets that are common to most blogs. Instead, Jux provides a clean (and beautiful) approach to blogging. Simply create an account, and then start sharing your content.

While Jux does seem amazing and has excellent support for mobile devices, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For instance, if you’re planning to create a more conventional blog, opting for WordPress might be a better option. On the other hand, if you’re leaning more towards visual content, such as photos and artwork, Jux may just amaze you with its features.

6. Tumblr

Tumblr is a popular and feature-packed microblogging platform. It comes with many outstanding and interesting features such as audio blogging (for sharing your music, for example), free custom domains, hundreds of amazing blogging themes and more. Furthermore, you can sync your Tumblr account with Facebook and/or Twitter so that you can update your social media feeds in a single location. Yet another awesome feature is the ability to create community-powered group blogs. Tumblr also offers support for many third-party apps such as Google Analytics and Feedburner.

7. Posterous Spaces

Posterous Spaces is an excellent online blog-publishing service that is similar to Tumblr.
Posterous Spaces has excellent privacy and viewing features so that you can easily control who can see what on your Posterous Spaces site. It’s designed to allow its users to post content quickly and as hassle-free as possible, so it has loads of features included to facilitate this, such as free mobile apps for iOS and Android smartphones so you can update your blog on the go and a simple, well-designed user interface. Using Posterous Spaces means you’ll be in good company; popular tech startups like MailChimp, TweetDeck and Airbnb leverage Posterous as their company blog.

8. Blogetery

Blogetery is a WordPress-powered online blogging service that offers a modest set of features. Free accounts get nearly 140 themes, custom domain mapping and roughly 40 plugins to choose from.
On Blogetery, ads are displayed on all free blogs, but if you wish to upgrade, you can opt for the paid plan that will cost you $3.50 per month and will give you additional themes, plugins, email support, 5GB of additional storage space, the ability to remove ads, etc.

9. Weebly

Weebly offers more than just blogging — it’s a fully featured website builder! Weebly’s blog manager features a drag-and-drop interface, support for image galleries, slideshows, video/audio, maps, etc. Additionally, you can opt for their Designer Platform that lets you build websites for your client, thereby effectively using Weebly as a content management system.

10. LiveJournal

LiveJournal (often abbreviated as LJ) offers blogging with a touch of social networking to it. You can participate in polls, create networks and interact with other LJ users alongside your blog.
With that said, the features, compared to other similar blogging services, are nothing to brag about. Their collection of template is decent, and plugins/extensions are pretty basic in nature.

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How To Creating a professional blog with WordPress

 

I am with the notion that every professional person should have a blog where they can share their professional knowledge with the world and earn some extra bucks too. Not only professionals actually, these days everyone is starting a blog. From school students to leading business men, everyone is building their online identity with blogging to share their skills and meet other people having the same interests.

However, doing anything consumes time and it gets even more difficult when you need to do it from scratch, without any prior knowledge.
Here in this article you will learn how you can build a professional looking WordPress blog without having any technical knowledge.


“Blogging with WordPress is as easy as writing a diary.”
Well, you can start a WordPress blog without buying a Top Level Domain like for example “www.Yourdomain.com” instead you can get a free sub-domain from WordPress like “www.YOURDOMAIN.wordpress.com”. But, here we are talking about creating a professional blog and having a blog with on a sub-domain doesn’t look professional.

How to buy a Domain Name?

Buying a domain is the trickiest part as you need to be simple and technical at the same time.
You can get a domain name for less than 20 USD, but if you do enough research on Google then you can get a domain for as low as 3 USD.

Step 1 : Picking a Domain Name
Suppose you are a singer and your name is “Harry Potter”.
You should get a domain like “singerharry.com” or “harrythesinger.com” and if you wish to be more name specific then go with “harrypotter.com” simply.
Well, domain name doesn’t really matter much after your blog gets established. Just avoid choosing a domain that is lengthy, misspelled or is difficult to remember. Also, don’t use hyphens while choosing a domain.

I prefer having a “.com” domain and if not that then “.net” is nowhere less. If you run a free organisation or a trust, choose .org domai.

Note: Buying a domain name which refers to another company’s name can lead to legal issues. Also, check whether your Company Name is available in all Social Networks (Vanity URL)

Step 2: Set up WordPress on your Domain
In order to set up WordPress on your domain you have two options.
1. Buy Hosting at your favorite hosting service provider. I recommend you to go for Hostgator or BlueHost.
2. Use WordPress.com

Buying Hosting

Buying hosting for blogging as a total newbie is not smart. Most probably you’ll not get a good hosting experience with free or cheap hosting providers because;
1. Your WordPress Blog will work slower on their low quality.
2. Your WordPress Blog won’t get into Google and other search engines.
3. Hosting Provider will ban your WordPress Blog if your posts fetch a lot of traffic.
Using WordPress.com for Hosting your Blog. You can register an account on WordPress.com for free and use it to set-up a WordPress blog on your domain.

Step 3: Get a Professional looking Theme for your WordPress Blog
Having a professional looking theme installed on your WordPress Blog is must. A good looking website always convinces the visitor to stay on the website.

However, getting a good looking WordPress theme is not that easy. You need to use a theme that doesn’t slow down your blog and is SEO friendly and above all is eye-catching. You get more than 210 themes to use on your WordPress.com blog but you won’t be able to upload custom themes which are a great drawback. Uploading and editing themes is only supported on self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Step 4: Start Posting
Now when you have your blog ready for blogging you can start updating it with relevant information.
You can also join various social networking sites to get maximum exposure and find more people with common interests.

Step 5: Installing Plug-ins
The best thing about WordPress is that it allows you to customize the blog in many ways one of which is using plug-ins. Having necessary plug-ins installed on your WordPress Blog is essential in order to keep your Blog healthy.

Step 6: Social Sharing
There are several social sharing plug-ins available. For example there is a plug-in called “Digg Digg”. It is a Plug-in that adds a social sharing bar on your blog. It makes the sharing of your blog easy and it can gain you good traffic from social networking sites. There are several other social Plug-ins available out there, you just need to get them. I at (ExceptNothing) use TF Social Share.

Step 7: SEO Plug-ins

Keeping your Blog Search Engine Optimized is as essential as filling your vehicle with fuel.
There are several Plug-ins available for free and are very simple to use. I prefer using Yoast Plug-in as it is easy and provides all mandatory features required. You can create an XML sitemap of your site; customize categories, pages, posts etc. according to your needs. For On-Page SEO Plug-ins, you can go for EasyWPSEO or SEOPressor. Both are great choice 

Step 8: Cache Plug-ins

Cache plug-ins can make your website faster. They create static HTML files from you dynamic blog. When the HTML file is created the web server will serve that file to visitors instead of those PHP scripts that are comparatively heavier. I prefer using WP Super Cache. It’s simple and dynamic and is simple to use at the same time.

Step 9: Logo
A blog or company’s logo is very important. It determines the Brand Identity. So, if you are good at Designing Logos, you can proceed designing it, or hire a good graphic designer and create a logo for your site. Stuck with creating a logo? Read this: Creating a Logo that will last.

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