Choosing the right blog platform is not always that easy—not that it really should be all that difficult either.  Here’s the thing…between the major blogging platforms out there, many get confused as to what these systems and services actually offer and how they work.  Let’s try and clarify the confusion here a bit if possible…

The Big 3 Blogging Platforms

WordPress

Extremely popular among its users and professional web developers alike, the WordPress blog platform has certainly earned its position at the front of the pack.  Often a significant point of confusion, though, is the fact that there are actually two different variations of WordPress out there—WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

For those looking for a standalone blog system that’s free and already hosted, WordPress.com is the answer.  While this is great for those just testing the waters with blogging, mostly because it’s free and easy, there are drawbacks.  For example, going this route more or less ties you to using their system, their hosting, and often, their domain—the dot com version of WordPress is not very flexible for developers and power-users.

Enter WordPress.org.  For those wanting to integrate a top-tier blogging system with their websites—or perhaps even use the system to power their entire site—the dot org version of WordPress is hard to beat.  Dot-org WordPress is actually extremely stable and robust open source software that you have to install on your own hosting provider (that must meet certain requirements).  From there, a developer is free to customize and integrate to their heart’s content.  This is probably why WordPress.org is becoming as extremely popular as it is.

Blogger

Blogger is Google’s entry into the blogging market.  While it’s hard to fault what comes from Google, this platform isn’t as pro-friendly as some of the others.  In other words, it’s created more for the average consumer—the person that just wants to start blogging without having to mess with all kinds of complex setup or anything of the sort.

Blogger is free—and most Blogger sites are hosted and reside on the service’s own servers.  From the standpoint of simplicity, all you’d really need to get started is to log in with a Google ID, pick a name for your blog, and pick a blog theme from the array that they offer.

Downfalls to Blogger?  Well, even though it was pretty much the first, it has lost some popularity with power-users due to fact that it simply isn’t as well-featured or easy to integrate with an existing site (like WordPress is).

TypePad

TypePad is another reasonable popular blogging platform.  As one of the top tier blogging systems out there, it adds a nice alternative choice to the above mentioned platforms.  While it’s secure, works as it should, and offers a good choice of quality designs to choose from, it is a subscription-based service with fees beginning under $10 per month.

This blogging platform can be integrated with your own existing website or can also be used as a stand-alone option through their provided hosting.  However, even when integrated into a third-party site, users still must manage the blog through TypePad’s service—this can be a hindrance for some.  The bottom line is that it’s probably worth a try if you’re not satisfied with the other options out there, even though it really doesn’t stand out as a best pick option for many.

Our Pick?

We knew you’d ask!  Here at Sleepless Media, we choose to use WordPress.org almost exclusively.  It integrates beautifully with our customers’ websites—and customization is practically unlimited.  Then there’s the fact that it’s been designed and tweaked from the ground-up by a passionate team of open-source developers to be faithfully SEO-friendly.

There’s a massive user-base out there, so any bugs or security flaws are quickly found and worked out by the masses—this also means that there are very frequent revisions and updates releases.  Not to worry though, because the platform integrates a one-click update option.  Just like “there’s an app” these days for pretty much anything, the same goes for WordPress.org—there’s a plug-in available to allow pretty much anything you can imagine.

Oh, and to top it all off, did we mention that WordPress.org is free?  It’s certainly hard to argue with this pick when the possibilities are nearly endless and the cost to access this excellent software is zero.  Although customizing, integrating with websites, and further development do come with a nominal price for time, skills, and expertise, all in all, the cost is kept to a minimum thanks to the head start from WordPress.

WordPress seems to have become all the rage over the last year or so.  More and more businesses and organizations are turning to the open source web software platform to power their blogs and websites, and some are even using it as a full-fledged CMS (content management system).  And this is where the problem begins…

Now first things first, let’s make it clear that WordPress is pretty cool blogging software.  In fact, the blog you’re reading right this moment is powered on the back-end by WordPress.  The software was designed for blogs and it’s quite good at powering a blog with all of the right tools and features built right in.

But to use WordPress as a CMS to power an entire website—can this possibly be a good idea?  Unfortunately, the answer is, “No it’s not a very good idea at all!”

WordPress was designed to be blogging software, not CMS software.  Here are three specific examples:

1. WordPress is awfully “heavy.”

In other words, the software is loaded up with a feature set that is great for blogging.  But these features just kind of add extra baggage when it comes to using the system for CMS—they can really make a site sluggish.  Also, because of the extensive blogging feature set, the user interface is full of options and features that will only serve to confuse a CMS user whose primary goal is to add or update website content.  On the other hand, a well-designed CMS system is very clean, simple, and straightforward to use for even the novice user.

2. CMS requires more plug-ins.

To effectively use WordPress as a CMS requires the use of numerous plug-ins.  While using a couple of plug-ins is okay every once in awhile, the fact is that each different plug-in developed by different programmers with different skill sets interfaces in a different way with the blogging software and with other plug-ins that are installed.  The end result can be a compatibility nightmare—especially when a new release or update to WordPress comes out and all of the plug-in developers must scramble to get a new plug-in version together to be compatible.  We won’t even mention the plethora of potential security issues that arise from this scenario.

3. It’s not designed to organize large amounts of information.

Because WordPress was designed primarily to be blog software, it does great with categories and tags—the foundation of blog organization.  The problem with using it as a CMS for a larger website lies in the fact that it depends on the installed theme to establish a proper website navigation structure, and most available CMS themes just don’t handle the task very well at all.  Although it’s the standard for blogs, using time-based content presentation (where newest content forces older content down the list into obscurity) is not a good way to organize most website content.

Sure, go ahead and use WordPress to power your blog (or the blog portion of your website).  This is exactly what it was designed to do, and it works great for this purpose.  But be aware of its pitfalls and limitations before planning to deploy the popular blogging software as a full-fledged CMS.