Hey, Ashley.
I’ve been following the book blogging community for a while now. I’m interested in starting a blog myself, but the only blogging services I’ve heard of are WordPress and Blogger. I’m not really ready to commit myself to self hosting on WordPress.org, and I heard that WordPress.com is very limited. I also do not have a Google account, so I can’t use Blogger. Do you know any other sites where I can start a blog?
Thanks,
SharieSharie
Hi Sharie! 🙂
Is there a particular reason you don’t want to create a Google account? I honestly wouldn’t recommend any other platform other than WordPress or Blogger. There are other options out there, but they are more limiting in terms of what you can do, and it will be more difficult to move off those platforms if you want to move to WordPress.org later on.
Other free blogging platforms
Here are a few of other blogging options:
- Medium — I honestly don’t know much about this platform other than the fact it exists. I have read a few articles written on the site.
- Tumblr — Limited in terms of design and features.
- Weebly — Weebly is a website and blogging platform. But it is very limited if you only go with the free option. To see what I mean, you can check out their plan comparison page.
But these options are not very future-proof
If your blog takes off, you’re going to want to migrate to self-hosted WordPress at some point. But the problem is that these other free blogging options are not widely used or very well supported, and thus it can be extremely difficult to migrate to WordPress.
- The migration that works almost seamlessly is from WordPress.com.
- The migration that works the second best is from Blogger.
- The migration that works the third best is from Tumblr (from what I’ve heard, I have not done this personally).
Weebly doesn’t migrate very well at all because it doesn’t have an easy export option. I’ve read stories of people having to migrate 10 posts at a time, then delete those 10 posts from Weebly, then keep going.
And as for Medium, well I suggest you read Kenneth Reitz’s post on Why I Left Medium.
If you’re dead set against having a Google account, I’d suggest WordPress.com
WordPress.com may have limits, but it could be enough to suit your needs for at least a while. You cannot use JavaScript or custom CSS or custom themes, but you probably can’t do at least some of those things on the other free platforms mentioned above. At least being on WordPress.com will make it super easy to move to self-hosted at a later date!
Interesting advice, I didn’t even know about Medium for a platform
Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
I have read a few articles/posts from people on there, but I don’t know much about its inner workings.
self hosted wordpress all the way here, learned a lot real quick! Many hosts will do all the hard work for you.
High five!
Self hosted WP is definitely the best platform. It will give you the most control and flexibility.
What are your thoughts on Squarespace, Ashley?
I actually wanted to mention Squarespace in this post, but I didn’t since it’s not a free platform. I actually have written a post about Squarespace if you want to read it: https://www.nosegraze.com/squarespace-vs-wordpress/
Something like Squarespace does not and cannot match up to self hosted WordPress simply because of the nature of the platform. It’s closed source and you cannot upload custom scripts. That will always make it less customizable and expandable than self hosted WordPress.
So, someone like me (a coder/developer) would never be able to settle for a platform like Squarespace where you can’t edit and change anything you want. But for someone who doesn’t care about 100% custom themes and custom plugins, and just wants everything taken care of for them.. it could be a decent option.
I agree. I have my author website at wordpress.com because that has everything I need for now. And later I can always transfer over to wordpress.org easily if I want to. 🙂
I think that’s a great plan, Bieke. 🙂
WordPress.com has limits, but that’s the price you have to pay for any free platform. Other than Blogger, you’d be hard pressed to find an alternative platform with fewer limits that’s ALSO free.
My first blog was on weebly, after blogger and wordpress.com but nothing really compares to the winner WORDPRESS.ORG and if you have a host like Bookhost it’s the perfect match 😀 is by far the best thing i ever done moving to wordpress.org 😀
I’m so glad you’re loving .org and Book Host! 😀
I’ve been using self-hosted WordPress for YEARS. I started blogging when I was like 13 and it’s what I first used. I think I used Blogger one time, but I just didn’t like it. A couple years ago I tried another platform and just hated it. I love WordPress way too much, and now that it’s so widely used it’s like…why would I use anything else?
I don’t know if I could ever use Tumblr for book blogging. Their dashboard is too blah, and is always changing, and they just never settle on a consistent way of designing them. Every time I log in to Tumblr there’s something different. I also hate Disqus as a commenting platform, and that’s all you can really use.
WordPress ALL the way.
Self-hosting scares people more than it should. Nowadays, self-hosting doesn’t mean you need to know much about… anything actually. Many many web hosting services now offer “WordPress packs”. Those really take the customer by the hand and help them through the very few steps that are not automatic. They provide hosting, domain name, and install WordPress automatically. You don’t have to know anything about database, ftp, or anything. And it’s cheap.
You DO need to learn about how to secure your blog with plugins like WordFence and such. But that’s pretty much it.
I really think going (wordpress) self-hosted right away is a reasonable and inexpensive solution nowadays. If you start on WordPress.com and change your mind later, WP charge A LOT to migrate your blog from their platform.
I completely agree. I really don’t think self hosted is expensive. Obviously you get what you pay for, but you can get it as cheap as like $5 per month. That’s like two coffees!
There’s also Ghost, which is fairly new and is less packing in features, but for someone who just wants to post reviews I guess it’d be the minimalist option? No comment feature though, so Disqus is a must. Also, it uses Markup, which might take some getting used to? It’s available for install from Softaculous on some hosts and I use it for a personal journal but have debated using it before.
Well the reason I didn’t mention Ghost is because it’s not a “free platform”, which is what Sharie was looking for. 🙂 I know Ghost itself is free, but it has the same “self hosting” costs as WordPress (monthly hosting fee, yearly domain free). Sharie wasn’t interested in self-hosting, so I didn’t bring up Ghost. 🙂
When I started my blogging journey then my first question was, Why I should choose WordPress and not other CMS softwares.
I searched a lot about it on Google at that time and I found that everybody is recommending to use WordPress and I started doing the same.
Now today I know that why people should choose WordPress. Because WordPress is an independent and easy to use content management system.
The best thing about it is, We can bring any feature in our website with just using a single plugin. That’s really good. 😀
I am using WordPress since last 3 years and I loved it. 😀