What is your purpose in creating a blog? Do you want it for fun or to pursue your passion for writing or uploading your professionally taken photographs and videos? Or maybe, you’re serious about starting a home-based online business.
If you want to make your blog site stand out and make money, you’ll need a more robust blogging platform with more features or plugins. Free blogging platforms are usually limited, but there are ones you can upgrade to suit your needs.
Below are the important things you need to consider when choosing a blogging platform:
Features
Blogging sites can benefit from choosing the right features based on the type of blog you want to establish and promote. In that way, you can make your blog site more aesthetically appealing and functional to your viewers.
Here are the features you need to look for when choosing a blogging platform:
- Free themes: Every blog owner knows the importance of using themes to create a beautiful website. By choosing a blogging platform that offers a lot of free themes, you can easily and cost-effectively try a theme that’ll make your blog website stand out.
- Plugins: This feature is like an app to your blog, wherein you can add features, such as galleries and contact forms. Plugins add more functionality to a blog site. One good example of a plugin is WP Forms. It’s considered one of the most user-friendly contact form plugins for WordPress.
This online form builder enables you to create surveys, polls, contact forms, online order forms, email subscription forms, and payment forms in a few clicks.
- Writing Interface: If you’re writing heavy content on a regular basis, choose a blogging platform that can handle text-heavy blogs, like Medium. It means that the delivery of textual content is more effective and efficient using a writer-friendly interface.
Your Budget
There are many ways that you can eventually monetize your blog once it’s up and running, like using affiliate marketing and video marketing. As you grow your blog, you’ll attract more investors, clients, and customers to do business with you.
Of course, the amount of money or capital would depend on the purpose of your blog. If you just want to write a personal blog to satisfy your writing hobby, you can start with free and open-source blogging platforms, like WordPress.
Make sure to choose a blogging platform that’ll enable you to scale easily as needed. In that way, you can transition from simply blogging to running a startup or small online business.
If you have a big company and want to establish a solid web presence through your blog site, you’ll likely need a substantial amount of budget. It’ll prepare you in converting your blog site to a fully functioning e-commerce site.
Customization Options
It’s crucial to select a blogging platform that won’t constrain your desire to improve your blog site. Customizing your blog site will make it different from the crowd. Surely, you have observed a similar theme across several numbers of websites, and you don’t want to end up like the generic ones.
One customization option is choosing a theme for your blog site. Remember, choosing the wrong theme can restrict you from achieving your goals. That’s why you have to consider compatibility (with major browsers), plugin support (plugin compatible with new theme), and page builder integration (new tools should work with your new theme).
Blog Site Security
Cybercriminals are fond of accessing blog sites for their benefit. You don’t want to be a victim of these bad guys. That’s why it’s important to consider blog site security when choosing a blogging platform.
Using various themes, plugins, and hosting services can put your blog site at risk of cyberattacks. That’s why you also have to be careful in choosing your plugins from unknown sources, most especially free ones.
Here are some tips to keep your blog site secure:
- Keeping your blogging platform up to date will ensure that you safeguard your blog site against cybercriminals. Only about 62 percent of WordPress blog sites run in the latest software version.
- Keep your credentials secure. Create a strong admin password and provide a second verification method as much as possible (two-factor authentication).
Conclusion
Now, you’re ready to choose the best blogging platform for you. Consider your purpose of creating a blog site and your budget that’ll best align with your choice. Also, you have to take into consideration the features and security of the blogging platform to ensure that your blog site will perform at its best.