Choosing the right blogging platform is your first step of your online success, because selecting the wrong blog platforms for your blogging May turn you into various problems like

1. Time taken for migrating to the new blogging platform
2. Implications over your search engine traffic
3. Costs paid over for changing the blog platforms (optional)

So selecting the best blogging platforms that exactly matches your requirement is the best way of getting succeeded in your blogging objective. Selecting the blogging platform is depends on the individuals requirements but the following factors will best address to help to identify the best blogging platforms that suits your needs.

Factors of choosing best blog platform

1. What is my objective of blogging?
2. How much I can spend over my blogging?
3. What type of internet knowledge I have?
4. How much time you planned you have spent with blogging?

Objective of blogging

Before going any decisions, you should most importantly think about the objective of the blogging , it will helps you to find out right blog platform than any other factors because if you are really serious about blogging means other factors like ( your budget over blogging, your knowledge of internet, your allocated time with blogging ) will become secondary and it will gives you to choose the best one.

So think about your objective of blogging!

For example I have come up with following sample objectives

High or Professional blog objective

Promoting customer relation through our blogging for our organization

I would like to promote my product or service with my blog

Blogging is my profession; I am really devoted for blogging

I am a frequent blogger, I have regular and huge readers base

I am serious about earning money through my blog

Freelance or amateur blog objectives

I would like to find my preferred date with my blog

I would like to share my photos with my friends and relatives

May be these sample objectives may differs with your objective weightage ( preferences of your objective ) but most of the objective will be categorizes as above .

Write down your objective – Make a decision

Everyone has their own objectives for their blogging that may not be completely covered up here, I greatly recommending you to write down your blog objective and think over it to come up with better decision. So if your blog objective is in high or professional objective you may set as other factors as secondary

For example

I have serious about blogging to generate revenue but

I have limited with spending money for standalone blog – Solution: you may find a sponsor for your hosting

I am a newbie to the blogging – Solution: you may allocate dedicate time for learn blogging quickly

Blogging Budget- How much money you are ready to spent for over blogging?

Your blogging budget is depends on your preferences over the following parameters of your choice

You blog with

1. Self hosted with sub domain Vs Branded Domain Name with Dedicated Hosting
2. Readymade free theme Vs Premium or Custom Designed

Self Hosted Blogging Platforms

Most of the popular blogging platforms ( WordPress, Blogger and etc) offering the self hosted blog service integrated with their domain name

Naturally self hosted blog URLs have the format of

Username.providername.com

E.g sakthiganesh.wordpress.com

Some of the popular self hosted blog platforms are

WordPress.com
Blogger.com
Movable Type
TypePad

You don’t have to pay anything for this self hosted blogs , most of the blog hosting providers offers this sub domain blogging service at free of cost.

Advantages of using self hosted Blog

Extremely cheap or almost free bog hosting

Most of the popular blog hosting platforms are free ( Typepad charges for self hosted edition)

Easier to setup and maintain

Self hosted blogs are easier to setup and maintain, you can easily setup your blog by filling the forms and you can manage your design with their prebuilt or readymade themes.

User friendly architecture

Managing the blog is easier with self hosted blogs , you can effectively manage your blog posts, anyone who have knowledge about basic browsing can easily manage the contents of blog.

Maintenance free – Automatically updated

Self hosted blogs doesn’t need to be maintained against spam, virus or some other means of security hazards , blog providers manage their servers and also the self hosted blogs automatically update their software periodically .So you have nothing to worry about it

Express Search Engine Indexing

Being powered with providers domain name self hosted blogs are indexed with search engines in a express way .Most importantly it was observed that blogs who have powered with bloggers are extremely indexed faster and appearing the Search Engine Result Pages frequently

Limitations or disadvantages of Self Hosted Blogs

Limited configuration available

Many of the self hosted blogs have the limited with configurations you can’t update the configuration as per your needs. Probably most of the self hosted blogs doesn’t allow to update plug-in are widgets that are available outside from the library.

Less control over their blogs

The greatest limitations with self hosted blogs are bloggers have limitation of control over their blogs. Bloggers will get frustrated when their blogs got their downtime due to the providers but no question will be asked with providers .Most of the time they can do nothing than reporting this they have less control over their blog visibility

Missing Branded Appearance

Being hosted with sub domains it was considered against professionalism that greatly missing to spread the brand impression with its viewers. And also having the username followed by blog provider name is not easier to spell and remember in all the time

Moving with dedicated hosted Platform is cumbersome

Moving to the self hosted platform to dedicated hosted platform is cumbersome for beginners, in most of the blog hosting providers it was also takes time for even for professionals. This is because due to the limitation of blog hosting providers for exporting posts, themes and settings.

Dedicated Blog Hosting

Dedicated blog hosting involves host their blog in their own domain and web space for doing this you need the following things

1. Blog Software
2. Dedicated Domain
3. Web space or web hosting

Blog Software

The software which is used to setup and mange your blog. WordPress and many of the blog software ( Worpress.org not wordpress.com) come with free of cost to setup with your own domain and hosting . Other popular software providers are

WordPress.org
Movable Type
Expression Engine
WordPress.com
Drupal
Custom Made Blogs
Text Pattern
LiveJournal -
Mambo
Nucleus
b2evolution

Note :

Our blog (sakthiganesh.com) is powered with WordPress blog software

Dedicated Domain name

If you want to setup your own blog, you should buy the domain from the domain registrars, there are literally thousands of domain registrars are available some of the popular domain registrars are

1. 1&1 Domain
2. Namecheap.com
3. Godaddy.com
4. Netfirms.com

Notably 1&1 Domain offers excellent offers for domain registrations comes with handy features like domain management tools and other offers and they also offer free domain when buying the web hosting account

Special Note:

Some of the web hosting company like 1&1 Web Hosting offers domains for free of cost when purchase with web space account . So you can save money from spending money separately for domains

Web space for hosting Blog

After purchasing the domain name, you should have the place where you can host your blog software and other files so that it can be visible globally. Literally thousands of web hosting companies are offering the web space online not all of them providing the right service, only few of them offering the excellent service with superior customer support .

And also in case of Blog web hosting , it should works more than a ordinary web space ,the providers has to be well optimized for blog hosting service .

As per BestWebhostingFinder HostGator is most preferred for blog hosting service

Reference

Best Blog Hosting Company

Advantages of Dedicated Blog Hosting

Complete control over Blog

When you are hosting your blog with dedicated blog hosting you have complete control over your blogs, you have control over your blog design, architecture and extendibility. You can choose your design according to your preferences and no more limitations.

Expandable Feature

You can extend the blog by adding more plug-in and widgets that supported with your blog hosting software. You can add plug-in as per your requirement and extend the features of the blog that not being limited with default installation but also per your requirement

Greater Brand Visibility

When you are hosting with your domain name you are not only host your domain name on your own domain name, you are making your blog spelled by your viewers. That approach that dramatically increases your brand visibility that helps to increase the overall popularity of the blog in many ways . More importantly when your blog hosting gets successful then all of the credits will be remained with you not with other providers

Limitations or Disadvantages of Dedicated Blog Hosting

Technical Expertise:

Installing and maintain the blog software requires technical expertise of connecting with databases, web programming languages, security concerns and etc this can be possible only if you have enough knowledge in the particular domain otherwise you may spent additional money for hiring the professionals to doing this .

Costs required for maintaining blog hosts

Whenever you are going for dedicated hosting plan you should ready to pay for domain name, web hosting space, template design costs (optional) and other costs related to maintain the website.

Conclusion:

If you are really serious about blogging or you are serious blogger I advice to go for dedicated blog hosting ,but if you are a freelance writer or just started blogging you may try self hosted blogging for little time and choose dedicated blog hosting after some time .