3 Great Sites to Create Your First Blog
By Mitch B Wilson Submitted On October 13, 2013
Blogging is a great way to share your thoughts and opinions online and provide people with interesting content. Creating a blog is often fun and exiting, although it may be difficult for inexperienced bloggers to choose a blogging platform that's right for them. There is a wide variety of free and paid blogging platforms.
Whether you are completely new to blogging, somewhat experienced, or actively blog, these blogging platforms may be what you are looking for.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blogging platform created by Google. The sign up process is very simple; you can create a blogger account with an existing Google account. Blogger is excellent for new bloggers due to it's simplicity and ease of access.
With blogger, you can create a new blog in less than 30 seconds. Whether you want to customize your new blog is up to you. There are many pre-designed themes you can choose from that will help your blog stand out. Besides choosing a theme, you can further customize your blog by changing the color scheme and layout.
One of the best features that Blogger has that other blogging platforms do not is FREE DOMAIN MAPPING. If you are not familiar with domain mapping, it's basically taking a custom domain name that you bought and connecting it to your Blogger blog. For example, if you bought the domain name "http://www.petfood.com" from godaddy or some other domain registrar site, you could connect that domain to your Blogger site that is called "http://www.petfood.blogger.com".
Pros:
- Free domain mapping
- AdSense widget
- Very easy to use
- SEO friendly
Cons:
- Lack of design and custimazation options
- Limited website capabilities
- Not as modern nor advanced as other blogging platforms
Conclusion: Blogger is a great blogging platform for new bloggers and is very simple to use. It's unique due to the fact that you can map your domain for free.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a free, unique blogging platform that has characteristics of a social network. It's extremely easy to use and takes less than 30 seconds to join, unless you type very slowly. Tumblr is often referred to as the hip/cool blogging platform.
Some notable features that Tumblr offers makes it stand out from other blogging platforms. These features include: free domain mapping, ability to follow other blogs and users, and the ability to re-post other people's posts with one click. Similarly to Facebook, Tumblr provides an option to favorite, share, or comment on a post.
Pros:
- Free domain mapping
- Reblogging
- Very easy to post
- Followers
- Modern blogging platform
Cons:
- Lack of customization
- Creating pages is difficult
- No widgets
Conclusion: Tumblr is an awesome blogging platform any blogger, new or experienced. It's social networking like features makes it stand out from the average blogging platform. The free domain mapping seals the deal.
Yola
Yola is a website builder that can be used as a blogging platform. Yola is great for bloggers who want to completely customize their blog site and create a blog that looks more like a website than a blog site.
The features that Yola offers are create. You create your site by using a drag n' drop method, which is very simple and keeps your site neat and organized. Pre-designed themes make it easy to create a sophisticated site fast. These themes can be totally customized to your liking. Yola provides widgets such as "picture", "text", "HTML Code", "File", "YouTube Video", "Google AdSense", and many more. These widgets are also created by using the drag n' drop method.
Pros:
- Huge selection of widgets
- Room for a lot of customization
- Create and manage many pages with a navigation menu
- Numerous cool features
Cons:
- Domain mapping costs money
- Some features require a paid upgrade
- Takes more time to create a post
Conclusion: Yola is an amazing website builder. You can fully customize your site with themes, the style editor, and many useful widgets. The only down side is some features require a paid upgrade. Overall, Yola is ideal for bloggers who want a more professional feel to their blog, more customization power, and more widgets that provide cool features.
By Mitch Wilson, Friday, 11 October '13
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Mitch Wilson is a young entrepreneur, blogger, social media enthusiast, and online marketer.
Learn how to make money online with free, detailed guides at:
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mitch_B_Wilson/1723100