|
I've been doing some serious research on different blog platforms to determine the best/easiest ways to integrate a blog into a more complex website. I was able to successfully code a Blogger (Google) blog to weave seemlessly into a more full-featured website for the God and Country Festival in Nampa.
I also managed to turn a blog into a custom order status system for an electronics repair shop. The possibilities that blogs provide for integration into the websites of businesses and ministries is really endless. I believe blogging is now an essential part of communicating with customers and clients on the Internet.
I wanted to look around at the alternatives available for blogging platforms. My primary experience was with the completely free Blogger, but I decided to look into a paid alternative called Typepad. Typepad is a blog service by SixApart. I also reviewed Squarespace, and will be test driving WordPress in the near future.
A point-by-point look at each blog platform:
Blogger
I originally found Blogger a bit klunky out of the box. That opinion quickly improved the more I tweaked the code to make it do what I wanted it to do. What I like most about it is its customizability. You have full access to every bit of code that is output to the blog, which means you can do some serious integration with an existing website.
What makes Blogger even more desirable is the fact that you can host your blog on your own webspace. (If you don't have your own webspace yet, I can help you out here.) Other blog platforms like Typepad and Squarespace are exclusively hosted solutions, which means you host with them, or hit the highway. As a webhosting provider, I don't like that. Nevertheless, I wanted to learn more about their platform.
A drawback of Blogger is that it doesn't support multiple categories or multiple pages for a single blog. If there was one feature I'd change about Blogger, it is this one. I love Typepad's multiple categories, because they actually create unique URL's on the fly for each category. Create a new category (and even assign multiple categories to the same post) and a category directory is automatically created. Very nice.
If I could pick a second feature to change about Blogger, it would be the commenting. I'd love to have an RSS or Atom feed output from Blogger comments, so that it can be re-purposed into the sidebar. This is a really cool feature of Typepad that I just love. It really draws users into the conversation, which is really what blogging is about, right?
There is a workaround to accomplish this in Blogger, however. It's a little complex, but do-able with a little knowledge. (I can give you a proposal for blog integration services if need help on it.) In order to publish a comment feed in the sidebar of Blogger, I installed Haloscan commenting (a third party add-on), burned the RSS feed of the comments from Haloscan using a Javascript "RSS to HTML" converter found at Feed Digest (a fourth party add-on), then paste the Javascript into my Blogger template. The subject line of the comment in the feed is its URL, rather than Typepad's more user-friendly "username" and "subject." (Here is an example of Typepad's comment feed in the sidebar.)
Nevertheless, I still like Blogger for its flexibility. I can make it do almost anything.
Typepad
I spent a great deal of time customizing the code of a Typepad blog at the most advanced level of service they have. The cost is a big drawback when you can have Blogger for free. But there are some features of Typepad that are appealing, particularly the comment feed and multiple categories.
A word of caution is that you cannot obtain a high level of integration on Typepad with an existing website. The reason goes back to the fact that Typepad is a hosted blogging platform, and is not intended to offer full-featured webhosting services. So if you want a customer database along with your blog, for instance, you will have to mesh two sites together. You're essentially paying double for two different websites, then you'll have to jump through hoops to make the two sites appear to be one.
You cannot point your own domain at your Typepad blog without paying through the nose for one of the more full-featured plans. Once you do that, you still do not have FTP access to your site. You can create static pages and other files for download, uploading them one by one to your Typepad space using a browser-based control panel. But this will get old really quickly for most people, and is simply unacceptable in most cases. You cannot use a site editor like Dreamweaver with your Typepad space.
Nevertheless, if all you want is a blog, and a nice one at that, Typepad could be a good choice. Just be aware that you will not be able to expand beyond that very easily.
Squarespace
Squarespace is an interesting platform. Like Typepad, it is a hosted solution. While I'm biased against hosted solutions, because they compete with my webhosting services, it's not on this basis that I couldn't get excited about their platform. Call me a control freak, but I like to have more control of the raw code of my site. I can see the potential for some advanced blogs on Squarespace, but nothing that offers true integration with the rest of a business website.
I believe true integration--where a blog becomes a one of many parts of a site--is the way things are going to be in the future. So far, I just haven't seen the ability to do that with the hosted solutions like Typepad, or in this case, Squarespace.
It would be unfair if I didn't acknowledge that the Squarespace interface for creating and editing pages was pretty intuitive. But what is gained in easy set-up, in my opinion, is lost by its inability to expand with the needs of the site owner. The hosted solutions, as I see them, appear to be too self-limiting.
WordPress
Another blogging platform I've given a test drive is WordPress. WordPress can be hosted on any site with MySQL database capability. All of my hosting plans have this feature. I'd be happy to do a free Wordpress install for new customers.
What I like about Wordpress is the user interface and extensibility through third party plugins. It has a major Open Source following, which means coders are constantly making it better.
There are thousands of Wordpress design templates available for free, so changing the site design is quick and easy in most cases.
Joomla
As you may or may not be able to tell, I've finally settled on Joomla for most of my sites. It is not a true blogging platform, but can fill that role as well.
Joomla is an open source content management system (CMS). A CMS is a category of web applications that includes blogging platforms, but also includes far more advanced techniques for management of content. Basically, a CMS separates design from content through a database managed backend. Joomla in particular does this well, with extremely advanced features like multiple users, administrators, authors, and access permissions. There are advanced e-commerce features available, blogging plugins (like Wordpress), user-generated tags and comments (like you see on this site), and numerous other features.
In short, I'd recommend it for just about any website need because of its flexibility and open source support around the world. All of my webhosting plans can be configured easily to run Joomla.
Need help with your website?
Trackback(0)
 |
Technorati Tags:
Business 
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form