Blogging Platform recommendations?

[Matt23]

I'm looking to create a blog. 

Any good ones you'd recommend?  Free preferably.  

And any advice at all about blogging, especially if you've done it.

Cheers

[Leo Gura]

Wordpress hands down. You couldn't want anything more.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Leo Gura

[thepixelmonk]

Wordpress would ultimately be more customizable depending on your needs. I do like https://ghost.org/ though.

[Michael569]

You may need a paid platform if you want your blogs to be published, but prices for creating your own website that includes blogs are not that steep. I'm sure you could find free platforms but in my opinion the moment you start blogging you are also branding yourself and creating a sort of a marketing image of yourself, your ideas etc. So it may be better to have your own website and have a blog to be part of that rather than it being hosted somewhere randomly among free blogs by a hundred thousand other people. 

I have a blog on my web and have published a few posts over the last 2 years on a variety of health topics. My website is hosted by Wix but there is plenty of other options available. 

When it comes to, how to write a good blog, I'm not an expert. My blogs tend to be technical and I'll often get pulled down a variety of rabbit holes that may not be relevant for my audience. 

I think the major question is: who are you writing for? If your audience is non-academic the standards of the blog would be different to academic audience. Using font consistency, avoiding dead links, including links to other blogs you already wrote and links to content other people published might rank you higher on SEO (if you care about that sort of stuff). 

If you are writing for a very small group of people maybe you could just setup a Facebook group and do it there? 

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Michael569

[FourCrossedWands]

WordPress is still the most popular platform and still the best if you are serious about blogging. Tons of plugins and customizations. However, the more popular a platform is, the more hackers are trying to breach its vulnerabilities. So, be prepared to spend some time with security plugins and keeping everything up to date.

[Matt23]

Cheers ya'll 

[UnbornTao]

For Wordpress, you could use the Genesis framework and its themes or the GeneratePress plugin. These are about theming, appearance, etc.

[Dryas]

Substack is pretty popular these days