Some blogging platforms are well known for their ease-of-use. Others are better known for being the darlings of developers, because they offer them quite a bit of power over the platform. If you are an everyday blogger, it’s quite possible that your technical abilities could range from exceptionally advanced to complete beginner. If you’re trying to decide upon a blogging platform to use on your own server, here are some things that you should be aware of.
WordPress
WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems in the world. It is also enormously easy to use, even for people who don’t have that much technical knowledge. The WordPress platform has the advantage of having many different themes created for it, each of which allows you to alter the appearance of your site or some of the functionality and to do so without doing any of the behind the scenes technical work. Many of those themes are built with administrator panels in them, which allow you to change rather specific aspects of that theme – including elements such as stylesheets – without actually opening any text files to do it.
WordPress also has many different plug-ins that you can add to your website, and these give you quite a few functionalities. Widgets are used extensively on this platform, which allow you to include things such as contact forms, social media feeds and other content on your website.
Where ease-of-use is concerned, WordPress is generally the go-to-choice for bloggers.
Joomla!
Joomla! is a very popular content management system, though it tends to have more of a following among business users than personal users. It is a bit more complex than WordPress and requires more knowledge of web programming to utilize correctly.
Just as is the case with WordPress, you can apply a variety of different looks to your Joomla! site with templates, which eliminate the need for you to do any programming to design your site. This content management system also has plenty of modules that you can install that allow you to add functionalities to your website without having a programmer create them for you from scratch.
Drupal
Of all the freely available blogging platforms out there, Drupal is likely the most complex. This platform, however, is very popular with those who have advanced programming skills and who want the most control over their content management system. Drupal has its own vocabulary and skills that you have to learn to use the program correctly but it is enormously powerful and there is a dedicated community of developers who are constantly inventing new ways to improve this platform.
Tumblr
Tumblr makes it incredibly easy to set up a blog, but you won’t have the type of control over it that you would with WordPress or other options. This blogging platform is run off of a private site and that means that the terms of service of that site will dictate how the content of your blog is handled, rather than putting you in full control, as it would be if you had your own domain.
Security is important no matter what type of blogging platform you are using. Make certain that you use strong passwords and, if you want the utmost in security, you may want to get a VPN so that you can use that to encrypt your traffic when you hook up to your web server to make administrative changes. It’s one of the easiest ways to make certain that your traffic isn’t being spied upon and that you don’t unwittingly become a victim of hackers on the Internet.
Author bio
Veronica Clyde is writer at VPNServices.net – a website where you can read reviews about the best VPN providers. You can read more about VPN services by visiting her website.