Should I Pay To Blog?

This article will compare three blog services, one that is free (Blogger), one that is paid but rather inexpensive (TypePad), and one using open source software but provided as a service from a traditional web host (Drupal). Each option has pros and cons, which I’ve listed below. You will find a number of interesting links and you may even discover some features that your current blogging solution is lacking.

Blogging has reached the masses, due mostly to free services like Blogger, inexpensive services like TypePad, and blogging software that is easy to learn and customize. There are many uses for blogs that are widely deemed as appropriate, such as disseminating company information to stockholders or the public, sharing information and photos with your family, or keeping a log of highly detailed and specific explorations of a topic. Blogging can also serve as a therapeutic outlet, or be used as a channel to reach people worldwide about topics of specific interest.

However, there are many negative feelings toward blogs and bloggers, mostly because free blog services can be abused by those that start them without any real goal or purpose, convey information that is highly esoteric or useless, or they can used simply to host advertising in attempt to generate revenue.

Due to the ubiquity of blogs, another problem with them is that they all suffer in one way or another from spam, usually in the form of comment spam. Even free services like Blogger try to thwart comment spam by letting users enable or disable required log-ins, or add captcha controls to prevent automated systems from leaving spam in the comments. Problems with captcha aside, do the paid services offer any better way of preventing comment spam than the free services? What are some of the features I should be looking for in a blog service? How important are the differences between the free services and the paid services? Should I pay for those features?

A Unique Domain Name

Depending on your needs, a unique domain may not be important to you. If you have a personal blog and your needs are modest, you might not care too much about having “blogspot” (for example) as part of your domain name. This may be confusing for some of your less savvy visitors however, or your blog may be blocked my corporate firewalls that have deemed any website with “blog” in the URL to be inappropriate for their private network. Typepad does offer a “Plus” service that lets you choose a unique domain name, however the Plus service costs the same as many budget web hosts charge per month, so I find myself asking why someone would pay for that when they could have much more than “just blogging” with a traditional web host. One method of simulating a unique domain name is to purchase your domain name through a registrar that supports “URL Forwarding,” then use this optioin to point your domain to your free blog domain name. This will meet the needs of many individuals, but is not the same as having true control over your domain and subdomains. If you want a unique domain name that doesn’t contain “blog” or “typepad” in it, you’ll want to avoid Blogger (in the free implementation) and the “Basic” version of TypePad.

Indexing and Searchability

What I enjoy most about blogging is getting feedback from visitors that have found my blog by searching for a common interest. The only way people are going to find your site is if the full posts are indexed by Google and other search engines. Until recently, Blogger blogs were not indexed well, with usually just one page indexed per blog, or the post titles were indexed but the post content was not. Since Blogger (Google) introduced their Blog Search however, I’ve noticed that full posts are being indexed and I have noticed a significant increase in traffic to my Blogger blog coming from Google. However, blogging software like Wordpress or Drupal will allow you to automatically ping “header” sites like Ping-o-Matic, which pings many blog search sites on your behalf. This type of service can greatly increase your blog traffic, which will eventually increase the indexing that Google and other traditional search engines perform on your blog. Blogger does let you ping Weblogs.com although I have never really seen any traffic to blog I’ve deemed as resulting from pings to that site. TypePad also has XML-RPC support meaning it has the capability of pinging search sites on your behalf, which ultimately means better search engine visibility. Indexing for Blogger and others will improve, but paid services with a unique domain and tagging will continue to outperform Blogger for some time.

Unique Design

If you would like to try your hand at web design by creating your own custom look and feel for your blog, each of the services mentioned here will allow you to customize your blog to varying degrees. Blogger has a liberal approach that lets you completely customize your template and insert Blogger-specific tags that enabled things like comments and trackbacks. While Blogger does provide around 30 “templates” that can be easily applied to your Blogger blog, you will quickly find another person that has the same template as you, which may be a problem. But do not despair, there are some great examples of unique Blogger blog designs, including Simplicity and the Mike Matas Blog, that you can use as inspiration.

TypePad blogs tend to look quite similar, since the service is more prohibitive in the “Basic” version of what customers can customize. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing however, since the TypePad template is a traditional three column layout and the colors and fonts are customizable. Many people feel that a customized header graphic with matching fonts and colors is sufficient, like the Dilbert Blog for example, something that is easily accomplished with TypePad. TypePad gives you a professional look with relatively minimal effort, which may be important if you are busy with other projects yet still would like a way to communicate through a blog. Kevin Rose has a TypePad blog for example with a minimalist design, yet is functional in that it is an outlet for quick posts or advertisements for other projects he might be working on.

Making Blog Posts From Alternative Sources

Most modern blog software offers you alternative methods of making blog posts. Many web sites let you take a content item (a photo, another blog post) and let you blog (using it as a verb here) that content item over to your own blog. I’ve listed a few examples of this below. If you are a user of any of the following websites or software, you will want to make sure that the blog service you choose supports these alternative methods of posting.

Post from Flickr

Flickr has wide support for blogs, including each of the options listed in this article. Below you will see all of the blog services you can post your Flickr photos to. Flickr has an especially convenient interface to post photos to your blog. Once you have your blog address and type setup, you log-in to your account, navigate to the picture you want to post, and simply click “Blog This” from the options above the picture. The advantage to choosing one of the blog services that Flickr supports natively (like Blogger or TypePad) means you have to do absolutely nothing on the other end in order for you to take advantage of this Flickr functionality.

Post from digg

Digg also supports a number of popular blog services that let you blog interesting submissions you find on their website. While blogging capability does exist for digg account holders, I find that most “re-blogging” of the same content that can be found elsewhere does not add a lot of value to the original story. I don’t use this feature myself, but many people find it useful.

Post using client software like w.bloggar

Another thing to keep in mind when choosing a blog service is that you don’t necessarily have to use the interface that you are provided with but can instead use a different interface with a client program like w.bloggar. W.bloggar can be used with an enormous amount of blog services, including all of the services mentioned in this article. Check their F.A.Q. page for a complete listing.

Blogger

Note on Blogger: Blogger can be used as an interface to send your files over to a web server (via FTP or SFTP), but for the sake of this article, will be examined with the free hosting option where users choose a third-level domain (a.k.a. subdomain) and have their blog hosted on “blogspot” servers. An example of this would be the Google Video of the Day Blogger blog.

Pros

• Free
• 300MB of photo storage
• Post from Microsoft Word via the Blogger for Word add-in
• No server or software administration
• Multi-author support
• S/FTP your posts to another server

Cons

• Widely abused with abandoned blogs and comment spam
• Heavy utilization means delays, I’ve encountered around one delay or malfunction per 5 times of use
• No tagging implementation reduces blog visibility
• Mediocre indexing
• Cannot create static pages (like an “About” page) that are one folder deep because the URLs and folder structure is generated
• Does not support different input types like Markdown or LaTeX

My overall recommendation for Blogger is that it is appropriate if you have a small personal blog where you want to share information with friends and family, but will not provide the professional appearance the others will and does not offer the rich categorization and tagging you can find elsewhere. Blogger does serve well for ad-hoc blogs where the focus is on quick dissemination of information for little or no cost, but don’t look to the free hosting version if you are looking for a professional web presence or if you plan to use it for your business.

TypePad

Pros

• No server or software administration, “Basic” version is cheap when compared with traditional web hosts (and may be more appropriate than a lot of additional software you won’t use)
• TypePad offers you a number of pricing options, but always includes attractive templates and reliable servers that can handle hundreds or thousands of daily visitors

Cons

• TypeKey system, while free, is prohibitive for those looking to post quick comments to TypePad blogs utilizing this authentication service
• Even with a paid “Basic” account, you still have “typepad” in your domain name
• “TypePad look” may be undesirable for your blog

TypePad does not offer a lot in the way of features over Blogger, but being that it is not a free service, it is far more immune to abuse (abandoned blogs, blogs hosting only advertising) and therefore retains some “exclusivity” that might make it more attractive to you. TypePad does offer a free trial that you can use to evaluate it head to head with Blogger. Keep in mind that if you want to upload pictures with TypePad, you will need to pay for their “Plus” service that costs $8.95 per month at the time of this writing. There are traditional web hosts that offer web hosting and 1 Gigabyte or more space for $10 dollars and less per month, so if you want to do more than blog at your website, a traditional web host would be the way to go. Alternatively you could host your pictures with a free Flickr account or at ImageShack and get by with the “Basic” TypePad service, but you will have to do more of the manual HTML work yourself.

Drupal

Notes on Drupal: Drupal is open source software that borrows many themes and modules from Wordpress. Drupal has similar elements to Wordpress, Moveable Type, and Plone. I chose Drupal for this article because I have the most experience with it, and it is more likely to be installed from inexpensive Linux or Unix-based web hosts versus Plone or a Windows/.NET solution like Community Server.

Pros

• Blog “module” can be used for multi-author blogs
• Excellent site indexing and search capability out of the box where others rely on third-party indexing and searching from Google or others
• Unique domain
• A custom design can mask out which underlying software you are using, creating a more professional and impressive appearance
• Can create static pages with logical names like “About” or “Contact” (as compared with Blogger)
• Supports alternative input formats like Markdown or LaTeX

Cons

• Blog module can be confusing for those new to Drupal who may not understand the various “node types”
• You have to maintain your Drupal installation and web server if your host does not do this for you, which can prohibit blog content creation if you spend too much time with server administration

Drupal, Wordpress and other open source free blog software offer a number of advantages. If you are looking to run just a blog however, you might not be interested in the management of the software and of your web server, and will instead want to utilize all the advantages of the software and pay to have your blog hosted for you. By using one of these types of software, you can “turn on” additional features as you need them, and can focus on developing content instead of spending much of your time maintaining the server. By purchasing service from a web host that supports the Fantastico autoinstaller and cPanel control panel, you will be able to easily add features, track visitors, run database queries, and much more through an easy to use graphical user interface.

Summary

To summarize, the basic difference is that when you pay for blog hosting, you get much more control over things like domain names, features, and storage. If these benefits are not important to you however, then a free blog service will certainly satisfy your requirements.