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Top five blog platforms

Jennifer Guevin Former Managing Editor / Reviews
Jennifer Guevin was a managing editor at CNET, overseeing the ever-helpful How To section, special packages and front-page programming. As a writer, she gravitated toward science, quirky geek culture stories, robots and food. In real life, she mostly just gravitates toward food.
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Jennifer Guevin
2 min read

PCWorld's editors recently put together a list of their five favorite blogging platforms. Not too surprisingly, the list was topped with a Blogger, WordPress and TypePad trifecta. Lesser-known Tripod and Squarespace rounded out the list.

Blogs

All five of the hosted platforms are either free or cost less than $10 per month, and each has its own set of pros and cons. Each of those feature sets can make a platform sing for one user while making it too pedestrian for another (formatting features can be a godsend for people who don't have strong HTML skills, for example).

Active bloggers become intimately familiar with their blog tool of choice, so a platform's features are even more important for them. This editor's alter ego has had pretty good luck using WordPress. But which blog platform is your favorite? Is there one that should have been on PCWorld's list but didn't make the cut? How well have blog platforms kept pace with the explosion of bloggers in the last few years?

Blog community response:

"In placing WordPress in second place, PC World note that ads are not allowed (I presume they are referring to the wordpress.com platform). This is an important consideration when trying to make money from your blog. Running ads is a prime money maker for many blogs and removing that option narrows down the money making strategies available to you as a blogger."
--Monetize Your Blog

"As someone who's used all the listed platforms, WordPress gets my vote for all-round excellence and usefulness. I also love Blogger for its sheer speed in setting up a blog. Typepad gets my vote for the best customer service. In short, they're all great, and if you get into blogging, you'll use each of these platforms at different times."
--Blogging for Dollars Blog

"Compared to Movable Type (an excellent platform), WordPress is child's play and when the time comes for an upgrade or when you decide it is time for a new look, ease of use becomes really important, particularly if you have to make those changes yourself."
--chilibean