The 6 Best Free Blogging Platforms
If you're looking to share your thoughts with the world, try these six free blogging platforms to get your blog started.
Blogs are a great way to express yourself and keep your thoughts tidy and organized. Not only are most blogs are highly customizable, allowing the appearance to be altered and graphics added, blog posts can also be easily shared with others. If you have something important to say, a blog post is the perfect way to express that idea.
Read on for our list of the six best blogging platforms you can use for free.
1. Blogger
Blogger is one of the oldest and most popular blogging platforms on the web. Since Google owns Blogger, you can be assured that your blog will be hosted on one of the most secure and reliable places on the web.
Being a part of the Blogger family means you will receive your own blogspot subdomain. You can also connect your own custom domain free of charge, which not many other free blogging platforms offer.
Blogger gives you a generous 15 GB of space to upload high-quality photos and videos, as well as unlimited bandwidth. There are pre-designed template themes and layouts available. But if you have HTML and CSS knowledge, you can tweak the templates to suit your preferences.
The Blogger content management system is intuitive and easy to use. Blogger has its own built-in analytics, but you can integrate Google Analytics to track your blog traffic more accurately. You can also connect your blog to Google AdSense, which will allow you to earn revenue from readers that visit your blog with automatically relevant targeted ads.
2. WordPress
WordPress is one of the web's most widely used content management systems. With WordPress, you get your own wordpress.com subdomain, unlimited bandwidth, and 3 GB of media hosting. You also have access to dozens of free website themes that can be customized to suit your personal taste.
If building an audience if your priority, you can use the Jetpack plugin which will help you manage SEO, statistics, and activity on your blog. It can also give you a hand with social media sharing.
Since WordPress gets used so widely, you'll find strong online community support on the WordPress forums. If you ever encounter a problem building your blog, you can seek help in the WordPress user forums.
3. Wix
Wix is a website builder that makes blog creation easy with its user-friendly drag and drop tools. The platform makes appearances a priority, with hundreds of fully customizable expertly designed templates at your fingertips. The extensive suite of design features and visual content, which includes vector art and color palettes, will make your blog pop.
You also get your own assigned URL, 500 MB of storage, and 1 GB of bandwidth to get your blog up and running. Wix also has built-in SEO tools that will help boost your blog's search engine rankings.
To top it off, customer support is available to you in case you run into any problems setting up your blog.
4. Medium
One of the more recent publishing platforms, Medium hosts journalists, bloggers, and publishers.
Medium's clean, minimalist interface means you can dive straight into blogging with no distractions. You can upload images to accompany your blog posts, and the design editor allows you to customize basic elements including the homepage header, fonts, and the background. To keep things simpler for your readers, Medium doesn't let you customize your blog as extensively as other blogging platforms.
In-built analytics show you statistics like total views, how many people read your entire post, and traffic sources.
As a specialized publishing tool, Medium has special features that allows readers to interact with your blog posts. Readers can 'clap' up to 50 times per post to show how much they enjoyed reading it. They can also highlight parts of your post so their followers can see which parts they enjoyed the most.
If you join the Medium Partner Program, paying Medium members can support your blog monetarily to allow you to earn revenue for the content you post on Medium based upon paid reader engagement.
5. Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging tool that allows users to post media and text in short-form. Tumblr allows you to post almost any type of media, including text, quotes, photos, links, audio, chats, and video, in a format that is easily sharable with other people.
Users receive a free subdomain to host their blog, but you can also connect your own custom domain for free. Bandwidth and media storage is also unlimited, so don't need to worry about exceeding any limits.
There are hundreds of free themes available for you to choose from, but if you are comfortable editing HTML, you can customize your own theme. You can also connect your Tumblr blog to Google Analytics to track visitor behavior on your blog accurately.
One of Tumblr's best features is its rich community of active users. You can follow, reblog, and connect with users who share your interests. Tumblr also won't clutter your blog with advertisements like other free blogs do—readers can visit your blog and read your posts without being distracted by advertisements.
6. Weebly
Weebly is a website builder that aims to make it easy for anyone to create a personal website.
As a free user, Weebly will provide you with a subdomain to host your blog, 500 MB of media storage, and unlimited bandwidth. If you prioritize SEO capabilities and want to take advantage of Weebly's unlimited bandwidth, the settings menu provides access to basic SEO options.
Weebly helps you express yourself with around 50 pre-built responsive templates that are packed with all the features you need. Building a blog from scratch is no easy task. Weebly's community forum and email and chat customer support will help you troubleshoot any blog-related issues.
Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the largest website hosting providers and powers millions of websites. Bluehost marketplace gives you access to hundreds of free and premium
website themes. Pick one that suits your style and start building.Customize your website to your heart’s content with true design flexibility. No other builder lets you create and modify with such boundless creativity.
Track your visitor analytics, user comments and anything else happening on your website right from your Bluehost dashboard.
Bluehost all-in-one solutions make website protection and reliability easy with free SSL, malware detection, automated security updates and 24/7 expert support.
Start Blogging Right Away
It's important to consider which features are essential to you when choosing a blogging platform. The best thing about each of these blogging platforms is that they offer a variety of unique features.
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