To make an informed choice about which blogging software to go with, you need to have a good understanding of what your requirements are and what the different providers offer. A good place to start is with the Getting Started with Blogging Software guide published last month by Idealware, a US not-for-profit organisation that provides software reviews and information for other organisations in the not-for-profit sector. (Registration is required to download the document and a small fee is requested but not compulsory).

The guide reviews seven commonly-used blogging platforms: Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Expression Engine, Text Pattern, and WordPress. Although the report is aimed at the not-for-profit sector, the overview of blog features and advice on how to choose blog software included in the guide will be useful to a much wider audience. The report provides both a summary and more in-depth review of each of the blog platforms examined, plus a handy table that compares the features offered by the different tools.

Back in March of this year I set up a design and style blog, atelier455. I wanted an easy-to-use tool that would allow me to moderate comments, use categories to organise my blog posts and offer good templates but also allow me to modify the templates to my own requirements. I researched the various blogging tools that were available, some free and some paid-for, before settling on Wordpress which ticked all of the boxes for me. Wordpress is free to use, and you can either take out a free blog via Wordpress.com or host your own version via Wordpress.org. Hosting your own Wordpress blog affords much greater flexibility in customising the look and feel of the site, so I chose this option at a cost of just a few dollars a month.
When it came to setting up this new blog, I decided to give the free version of Wordpress a go. Customising the design of this site wasn”t so important to me and I decided that the option to upload my own custom banner to the site (a new feature added in June for some Wordpress.com themes) was enough.
I”m only a few days in to using this version of Wordpress, so it’’s too soon to tell whether it suits my needs quite as well as the hosted version suits my other website. One thing I do need to look at is the template I”m using - I like it overall, but it doesn”t display categories alongside each post which is a bit of an omission I think.
Update: I”ve switched over to the hosted version of Wordpress - read more here.