To Blog or Not To Blog (And If So, Where?): A Round-up of blogging platforms

There has been some talk on Facebook and Reddit in recent weeks about blogging--whether it's still relevant, who is doing it, and what is the best platform. Well! It just so happens that I think it IS still relevant (obviously), and I have tried out a bunch of blogging platforms myself over the years. Some others I haven't tried personally, but I follow blogs on them, and have formed an opinion on their look and feel. Here's some personal observations...

Diaryland

Diaryland is the OG blogging platform. That's where I started in 2000. I would probably still be blogging on Diaryland, but for some issues with it. I'll get into those in a minute. An upside to Diaryland is there's still a strong community. You log in there's hundreds (thousands?) of blogs, sorted by most recently updated, and most bloggers display a list of favorite Diaryland blogs. Another upside to Diaryland is it's simplicity--there are exactly twelve templates to choose from. They haven't changed in at least 25 years! The templates each display a main blog area, and has links to the latest entry, an index of all old entries, an email link, and a link back to the main Diaryland site. And that's it! So if you really want to concentrate on just writing, with not a single bell or nary a whistle, Diaryland might be just the thing. There isn't even image hosting, unless you pay for Gold/Supergold membership (which I have, from time to time, over the years). Back in the day, I had an inmotionhosting account where I hosted all my images that appeared in my Diaryland blog and I had to make hard-coded links to them. In fact, you still pretty much have to know at least a little HTML to use Diaryland, to insert links etc. I started so long ago that I do know HTML fairly well, but that's one of the issues with Diaryland--who wants to hand code anymore? Another issue is the tech support--there isn't any. I forgot my password for 17 years, and apparently there was no way to get it back since appeals to Andrew, Diaryland's owner, went unanswered. And my email has changed, but the "change your email here" link doesn't work. Amazingly, I came across my password the other day! So I plan to clean up the old blog. I do have to say, Andrew's been hosting my blog for 25 years at no charge--that counts for something. Pretty amazing. 

Substack

Substack is the new kid on the block, relatively speaking. Launched in 2018 for widespread use, Substack was in fact built to help writers collect email subscribers and to send out paid newsletters. In this newsletter space there's a metric ton of competition, and a quick Google search shows about a thousand articles on what's better, Substack or a blog? Mind you, I haven't signed up for any emailed newsletters (I get enough email, thank you) but I've seen a bunch of blogs. The blog component  of Substack is okay, I guess. I mean, as far as layout goes, the Substack blogs I've seen look decent enough. They just seem kind of...businesslike, I think is the word? I have a feeling that the bloggers who opt for Substack are the "business" bloggers who are more interested in SEO, analytics, paid subscriptions etc than they are in good old fashioned blogging. It doesn't feel like there's a Substack community like there is with Diaryland, Blogger, Tumblr, or even Wordpress. I also checked around online for Substack template designers. Blogger and Wordpress have literally thousands of designers that offer free, beautiful blog templates organized by type, depending on what kind of blog you want. They can be personalized further with some basic HTML. I don't know what designs/templates Substack offers, but to me Substack blogs all look similar. Maybe because of the email thing? Because of the newsletters, Substack wants emails. I thought at first that you are compelled to supply an email address in order to get past the initial Substack blog page, and I was disgusted by that. Having readers enter their email before they can read your blog? Gross. But I was wrong--below the email request is a "No Thanks" option. Well good. I still don't like that an email request is the first thing you see when accessing any blog. I just get an icky feeling from Substack, and can't see myself using it for my blog.

Blogger

Blogger was launched in 1999 by Pyra Labs, bought by Google a few years later, and redesigned a few times. In the Theme menu Blogger offers dozens of templates you can launch instantly, plus there's an endless collection of templates created by talented designers online. The best thing about Blogger is the drag-and-drop template editing interface. It's so easy to add and edit posts, include YouTube videos, add images and drag to change their size, wrap text around images, add as many Pages as you want, all kinds of features. Obviously I use Blogger, and I love it. Some drawbacks that might be deal-breakers for you: Google has canceled the "Subscribe by email" function as of 2021. It's a mystery as to why they would do this, as it places Blogger at a disadvantage to other blogging platforms. It was called Feedburner, and Google didn't install a replacement for it! There are other tools out there that you can install using Blogger's "HTML/Javascript" gadget under Layout, it's just annoying that Google left Bloggers to figure it out on our own. This unfortunately does not inspire confidence in the future of Blogger. Another drawback to Blogger is that lately, users have reported blogs not indexing correctly. This means that the blog post won't be found by Google. You can fix it, but again, does not inspire confidence. Despite those two issues, and my mention of confidence, I can't stress this enough, GOOGLE HAS NO PLANS TO DISCONTINUE BLOGGER! I just doubt they would. There's just too much user support. If you're thinking of starting a blog, may I suggest you go with Blogger? You'd be even more user support for a great blog platform. Couldn't hurt. Did I mention I love Blogger?

Wordpress

These days, Wordpress is a free and totally open-source Content Management System that's used to power something like 40% of the internet. But back in 2003 when it was just a humble little blogging platform, I looked into it. As I recall, with Wordpress you needed a hosting site, like GoDaddy etc.That is not free. And there is a learning curve with the tech--you're not going to accomplish a Wordpress site in a few hours. But, from an article I found comparing Blogger to Wordpress, "...The platform supports thousands of plugins that can add any feature imaginable – from simple contact forms to full ecommerce systems. You can integrate email marketing tools, create membership areas, or add sophisticated analytics." The big question is, do you need all that? Do you want to spend a lot of time on the back-end, constantly making the updates Wordpress requires? Will you be doing eCommerce, newsletters, measuring analytics? For a blog? Another thing about Wordpress is its potentially sketchy security. I don't know, I just can't see worrying about all that. Wordpress is for other people.

Tumblr

Tumblr is like a cross between Instagram and old-school Twitter. With Tumblr you can make short blog posts, and share pictures, videos and music with the Tumblr community of members, follow other Tumbler blogs and re-post other Tumblr posts. I think I made a Tumblr profile but never made any posts. I know that you can customize your Tumblr blog, but I don't know anything about the interface or ease of use.

 

LiveJournal

I actually had a blog on LiveJournal for a few weeks in between Diaryland and Tumblr, before I landed at Blogger. I vaguely remember that the entries were about this strange little thrift store in the neighborhood. I don't remember how I lost the LiveJournal blog, just that it's gone. In any case, LiveJournal was sold to a Russian company at some point. That's the end of LiveJournal I guess.

There are more platforms for posting and sharing blog posts, but these are the only ones for which I  have experience. If anyone has more information about any of these, feel free to leave a Comment or email me. If you blog somewhere else, I'd love to hear about it!

PS: I didn't mention video blogs, or vlogs. YouTube is still the main thing for video. And it's also a Google company, which is why YouTube videos integrate with Blogger easily.