OK, I’m a blogging platform junkie – but when I started I thought I would only try one or two!
Since discovering the Joys of Blogging back in May 2003, I’ve been on a search for an elegant blogging platform that was suitably friendly to someone who has a smattering of HTML but is not a techie and does not really want to learn a lot of technical stuff. But I want a blog for business, not just for fun.
So I’ve tried – and/or had blogs on – Blogger, Greymatter, Movable Type, Diaryland, Radioland, Xanga, Typepad, Squarespace, maybe one or two others and now Blogware. OK, I’m a serial tester. I am not putting links in to all of these, partly because I’m a tad embarrassed about all the cyberspace junk I’ve left behind in my search – actually, I realise just now I don’t know the blogging etiquette here. Should I close down sites (if I can) or is that against the code of blogging?
Movable Type and Greymatter were too hard for me. Even when people wanted to help, and they did, I simply did not have the vocabulary to understand what they were saying, or at least to understand it enough to make the necessary adjustments. I liked Xanga but it’s a closed system – you have to be a Xanga member to comment: although with commenting spam turning rapidly into a Big Issue (see for example a current post at Blog Business Summit), maybe Xanga is not such a bad idea. Can’t quite remember what I did not like so much about Diaryland (which I thought for a while was Dairyland – coming from a line of dairyfarmers, not so dumb really, or maybe?)
Andy Wibbels put me onto Typepad and it’s excellent in many ways, and that’s where I have my currently most posted to blog – Thinking Home Business – although I have a few frustrations and gripes. Squarespace looks good but once more we have – I speak personally and from the bias of a non-techie – a platform with tools and explanations designed and delivered by someone who I can only assume is very bright but doesn’t know what it’s like to be bewildered and annoyed but even the “simplest” technical jargon.
Blogware is good, but it’s early days (for them too, it seems) and there are some really basic things I can’t find in the 500 page online manual. And their tech support forum is down. And the re-seller hasn’t replied to my support query. Good that I’m still in the trial phase. I’m still blogging there but feel constrained by not being able to configure the site as I would wish.
Blogger, now owned by obscenely rich Google, is good, but in a Blogger forum I belonged to there were regular complaints about glitches and breakdowns – hey, it’s free, so one can’t complain too much.
But Typepad and Squarespace and Blogware are not free, so I expect more.
I see Andy is using WordPress. Which is fine for Andy because he has the technical smarts . I’m open to being convinced, but I’d take some persuading that I don’t have to be even a trainee propellorhead to make it work well for me.
Blogging Platform Junkie ‘Fesses Up
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