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There are so many to choose from. What offers the best range of options for a new student blogger?

flag	asked Nov 4 at 23:22 Matt 53●5

Mohammad · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-17 16:52:36Z UTC

I currently use Wordpress.com for my blog http://www.mohammadarfeen.com/ but I feel that wordpress.com is lacking in features, and I can't make any income through it since they don't allow me to put up adsense, or most other block ads by blocking javascript, I will most likely be switching to tumblr or squarespace when my subscription is up.

Blogging Platforms for Students

Wordpress Self-hosted:

You will need your own server space, or hosting account, and it does take a little bit of tech savvy to work with
Expandibility is amazing, the options are endless, you can make it look like you want, add as many add-ons as you want, very easy to scale up.

Wordpress.com:

Very constrained but very easy to use and set up
Free of charge, but your domain will be a *.wordpress.com domain unless you pay $10 a year for the custom domain service.

Blogger

Easy to use, easy to customize, administration panel is sort of 2nd gradish, but that's mainly an aesthetic thing.
Free, unless you want a domain when its $10 a year I believe standard domain is *.blogspot.com
Not too many add-ons and extensions

Tumblr

Free, easy to use, networked well
very different from a stand alone blog, its more of a twitter type platform but you can use more than 140 characters.
standard domain is *.tumblr.com, custom domains are free.

Other options include Squarespace, movabletype, typepad, joomla, and drupal, but I think all of them are more difficult to use than the above mentioned or more expensive. The four listed above are all affordable, and fairly easy to use.

Happy Blogging

Looshi · Answer 2 · 2009-11-04 23:53:27Z UTC

I use Blogger for my blog 21 and Broke. I feel like Wordpress has more features, but I like the ease of use and the integration with my Google Account. It was also really easy to get Adsense setup and I don't have to worry about ever going over a bandwidth quota.

Gareth · Answer 3 · 2009-11-12 21:25:40Z UTC

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Tumblr is my blog of choice, not only because of the social aspects, but because its casual and easy. Plus, I don't feel as compelled to write out a long text entry as I do on more traditional blogging platforms (I was previously on Blogger.)

answered Nov 12 at 21:25

Gareth
21●1

I'm also a huge fan of Tumblr for the really simple stuff. It makes you want to blog :) – Kelly Sutton♦ Nov 13 at 3:30

nizzle · Answer 4 · 2009-11-06 00:16:00Z UTC

Self hosted WordPress is pretty awesome :-)

The only "problem" is that you would need a host and domain name, but those are actually pretty cheap then you'll need to set up the whole thing which takes a couple of minutes (15 tops)

it's the easiest webbased software I've ever used :-)

you can even use it as a full CMS instead of just a blog

Kelly Sutton · Answer 5 · 2009-11-09 07:00:41Z UTC

I would say that unless you're planning on doing some pretty big system changes, hosting your own version of Wordpress is not a good thing to do. Then every bug or server crash is on your shoulders and on your time.

Personally I'm a fan of Tumblr for casual blogging and Squarespace for anything professional I do. I go with SS mostly because I don't have to worry about uptime or functionality. It's all there and has never failed me.

Nora · Answer 6 · 2009-11-10 22:29:28Z UTC

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Wordpress self-hosted (as well as most self-hosted solutions, I assume) does force you to do a lot of updates yourself, plus add-on maintenance yourself.

answered Nov 10 at 22:29

Nora
388●1●10

StefanSSF · Answer 7 · 2009-12-22 09:38:12Z UTC

My blog StudySuccessful.com is a self-hosted wordpress blog. Wordpress works really easy and gives you great opportunities. Self-hosted gives you even more and the extra work you have to do (which isn't that much at all) is definitly worth it!

College Thrive · Answer 8 · 2009-12-31 08:49:31Z UTC

I use wordpress (self-hosted) for my blog, Collegethrive.com. So far it hasn't let me down. It is the largest blogging platform and provides plenty of plugins. There are also tons of great themes to help customize your blog the way you want it. Plenty of documentation and how-to's at wordpress.org to help you get started.

Best blogging platform for students?

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