Choosing NonHosted Blogging Software
If you finally decide to commit and dive into the deep end of blogging, this article is for you: these are our recommendations for the best non-hosted blogging software.
/READ MORE// Understanding A Hosted Blog
Movable Type
Movable Type is the great grandfather of blogging software. It was originally released back in 2001, and it quickly become on of the more popular choice for blogging software packages - for both amateurs and experts. Moveable Type was the first blogging software to allow contributions from multiple authors, and became well-respected for the way it could be used to build frequently updated websites and blogs.
Moveable Type offers:
- an Easy WYSIWYG editor, built to save you time.
- Simple tools for categorizing posts, adding photos, and spellchecking.
- Automatic RSS feeds
- Search, Tags, and more
- A wide range of licensing options - everything from personal to commercial.
If you want to spend less, the personal licence is free, but it lacks support from Six Apart and is limited to non-commercial bloggers. If you want to earn money on your blog, you have to use the commercial licence, the price of which varies but the most popular option is $295.95 for 5 users.
ExpressionEngine
Shortly after Movable Type was released, pMachine dropped a product called pMachine Pro. pMachine Pro quickly gained a following due to it's clean interface, solid performance, and huge flexibility with it's layout and design. Following that success, pMachine built a CMS (content management system) called ExpressionEngine, which turned out to be very powerful.
Today, the company is now known as EllisLab and ExpressionEngine supports all kinds of websites. The software offers both commercial and personal licences, and it offers really great blogging tools, but its flexible enough to develop any kind of website.
ExpressionEngine is great because:
- Can run multiple blogs with many authors.
- Powerful templates.
- Additional add-ons and plug-ins. Everything from mailing lists to photo galleries to forums.
- Great comment moderation and spam prevention tools
- Different levels of user access, meaning admins can control what users can do what.
ExpressionEngine's commercial licence is $249.95, a non-profit version is available for $99.95 and a free version is available for personal use.
WordPress
Wordpress arrived in 2003 and have provided an amazing platform for new and experienced bloggers alike, letting users control installs of the software on their own computers. WordPress is reputed to be the easiest blogging platform to set up and configure.
The user interface acts exactly the way the hosted version - WordPress.com - works. If you are considering using Wordpress, sign up for a free test blog on WordPress.com and get a hands-on preview of how it works.
Wordpress is probably the most popular blogging software - so much so that it was been suggested that 1/8 of the internet is now powered by Wordpress sites. It has a full host of features including:
- Price. Wordpress is Free. Period.
- Has thousands of templated ready to use, more you can buy, some user-made, some professionally designed.
- Includes Tags, Categories, and Post Type, letting you organize your posts endlessly.
- Great editing tools including Spellchecking, text styles, and easy ways to add video, photos and more.
- Great suite of states about who visits and reads your website.
- Great selection of Spam fighting tools.
- A great developer community, meaning an endless array of plugins, adding, themes and more.
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