Alright. You have a story floating around in your head, or have already started writing your book. You have three choices from here on –
- Find an agent, a publisher and start praying
- Self publish your book after writing your novel/book (offline)
- Blog.
First question: what blog platform should you use?
Blogging platforms are wide and varied, some offering more features than others. Le’ts take a look at six free blogging platforms in this series:
- Blogger (read review)
- WordPress.com (read review)
- WordPress.org (read review)
- Blogsome (read review)
- Terapad (read review)
- Vox (read review)
These blogging platforms will be marked in five categories, all with the aspiring author in mind: Ease of Use, Looks, Features, Support and Reliability.
Ease of Use
How easy is it to hop on and start writing? Does the user/author need to relearn the rules? Does he have to read a couple dozen documentation pages? We’re talking about the man on the street here – one that just wants to write stories, and has little time for code.
Looks
What are the selection of themes? Is the user interface pleasing to the eye? Is it relatively easy to code and create new themes? While looks depend on the coding ability of the author himself, some blogging platforms have limitations to how far they can be modded. it is usually easy to spot Blogger themes – limited rearrangement options, similar underlying link structure.
Features
Can you upload new themes? Plugins? Is there trackback? Are you allowed to password protect or hide posts? Are there categories? Blogging platforms have a mix of features, and at first glance it can get quite confusing. So that leads us to …
Support
If you get into coding trouble can you call for help? Are there uber fast, super helpful forums for users? Is there a continuosly updated documentation site? Because the true test of a blogging platform would be its support system.
Reliability
Are the servers always down? Do your posts get eaten up when you click publish? Holes in your platform should be known before you even choose.
And there you have it – the criteria of a good blogging platform. I’ll be reviewing the six over the next few days, so stay tuned and at least grab Novelr’s RSS feed at the top right corner of the page. Till then.
Read the next in the series: Blogger reviewed!
