Top 4 Free Online Blogging Websites/Platforms

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. Blogs are a great way to express yourself, share your thoughts or to promote your business. One way of creating a blog would be to buy a domain name and hosting, then set up a blogging platform such as WordPress. That is the more professional approach, but if you wanted something a bit more simple and informal, there are loads of websites that you can set your own blog up on. Below is a list of our five favourites…

1. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a blog hosting service provider owned by Automattic, and powered by the open source WordPress software. It provides free blog hosting for registered users and is financially supported via paid upgrades, “VIP” services and advertising. We think this is the best choice because it uses the WordPress framework, giving you an easy to use system with lots of functionality. WordPress also offers a vast amount of themes which makes customisation of your blog extremely flexible.

2. Google Blogger

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs. Blogger (like WordPress) is extremely easy to use and will provide you with all the features a blogger needs. There are a few advantages of using Blogger, the main one being that it is owned by Google. So when you publish a post it gets indexed on their search engine pretty quickly. Another advantage of Blogger is that Google make it very easy to have your site resolve to your own domain name, so instead of having MyBlogName.blogspot.com you can have MyDomainName.com. One of the things that isn’t quite as good with Blogger compared to WordPress is the themes. Blogger does offer themes/templates for your blog, but they are just not as slick and customisable as WordPress.

3. Weebly

Weebly is a free website creation and web-hosting service that features a easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder. Weebly is a good solution for the less tech-minded of people and is very easy to get on with. Weebly’s themes and templates are good, but they are limited in comparison to WordPress or Blogger. There is also limited functionality in comparison with other alternatives.

4. Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. This service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Tumblr does not handle longer posts very well, so is a good solution if you intend on your blog posts being fairly short. Tumblr does have some handy features though, this includes: bookmarklets, mobile apps, phone posting, IM submissions and other tools to post content. It is very fast and very easy to get short-form content onto your blog.

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