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Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

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Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#11

Post by laurenproctor »

I second the recommendations for Wordpress, but only if you're committed to maintaining your own domain. If you don't mind spending a little bit of money on hosting, the platform is simple, flexible, and pretty powerful. Plus, you'll have total control.

If you want to farm out to someone else, tumblr is good because it's inherently social (people will follow you, share your posts, etc), but it's largely visual and a bit spammy at times.

Posterous is another good platform because it's simple, has some social features, and tends toward the more content driven format.

Wordpress is still my vote though, because it can grow with your blog/site and vary from the fairly simple to as advanced as you want.

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#12

Post by jberryman »

Rambling, possibly-helpful non-answer: whatever you can get up and running with the fastest, and can use with minimum of friction. Blogspot, wordpress.com or posterous would probable all fit the bill.

Seems like about half of the most productive people/ most interesting blog posts I read are hosted at *.wordpress.com or someplace similarly humble.

But I mostly post this because I'm just finally finishing up a migration from self-hosted wordpress (which was working fine, but I wasn't happy with for various reasons) to octopress. This has taken me several months to get around to almost finishing (during which time I've gotten out of the blogging habit), and many hours of fooling with ruby environments, converting my old posts, etc., etc.

Hopefully the payoff for me will be simplicity, a better work-flow, new blog format that fits what I'd like to do better, etc. but it might have been a lot of wasted time and energy.

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#13

Post by andrewcross »

Since you are just starting out, I'd say go for Tumblr. It's incredibly easy and quick to get set up.

If you are still going strong after a few weeks and feel the need for something more powerful, then look into switching to something else. I personally switched to wordpress after a couple of weeks on Tumblr, but I have a lot of friends who still use Tumblr for everything.

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#14

Post by morazow »

I have been also looking for some blogging platforms for some time (before I did some writing on wordpress and posterous, never liked them). Recently, I started using Jekyll+Github Pages, it is more simple. For me blogging should be as effortless as writing some text on your favorite editor. If you like learning something new you should try them.

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#15

Post by jacobwg »

colmmacc wrote: post #10
jacobwg wrote: post #5

WordPress - it has excellent usability as a core product, but its real power comes from the large library of free plugins - there's pretty much always a plugin for everything. You can sign up for a free hosted version of WordPress at http://wordpress.com , though it has paid upgrades, or you can download the self-hosted version for free at http://wordpress.org . You could even go with a webhost (like http://dreamhost…

Wordpress had 6 "mandatory security update" releases in 2011 alone - http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions . It doesn't seem to have had a secure design from the outset. Worse still, ordinarily one might advise "keep up to date", but wordpress had a release backdoored ( http://www.cgisecurity.com/2007/03/wordpress-websi.html ) once, so keeping up-to-date isn't without its risks too. I've been giving tumblr a…

You're going to have security holes with every piece of software, though it is true some software is more secure than others.

I personally view having security updates as a plus - it shows that the WordPress team (open source community) supports their software. The fact that WordPress is running on 70 million plus websites [1], about 15% of the web [2], means that if a security hole is found, it will be fixed, and it can be fixed by anyone without having to wait for a limited amount of employees of a particular company to write the patch (one of the benefits of open source).

What you do get from Tumblr, though, is the fact that a 3rd party is responsible for keeping your website up and keeping it fast - you basically trade ownership of your website's software for a 3rd-party guarantee. This also means that if Tumblr is down or is hacked or you want to customize something beyond the theme, you are dependent on Tumblr...

So, while each may have its own use-case (Tumblr is great for the following/reblogging stuff), the fact that WordPress is regularly updated is not a reason to avoid using it as a platform.

[1] http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ [2] http://wordpress.org/news/2011/08/state-of-the-word/

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#17

Post by dwynings »

colmmacc wrote: post #10
jacobwg wrote: post #5

WordPress - it has excellent usability as a core product, but its real power comes from the large library of free plugins - there's pretty much always a plugin for everything. You can sign up for a free hosted version of WordPress at http://wordpress.com , though it has paid upgrades, or you can download the self-hosted version for free at http://wordpress.org . You could even go with a webhost (like http://dreamhost…

Wordpress had 6 "mandatory security update" releases in 2011 alone - http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions . It doesn't seem to have had a secure design from the outset. Worse still, ordinarily one might advise "keep up to date", but wordpress had a release backdoored ( http://www.cgisecurity.com/2007/03/wordpress-websi.html ) once, so keeping up-to-date isn't without its risks too. I've been giving tumblr a…

Tumblr had 42 hours of downtime in 2011 alone - http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42-hours-of-downti....

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#19

Post by _gd3l »

colmmacc wrote: post #10
jacobwg wrote: post #5

WordPress - it has excellent usability as a core product, but its real power comes from the large library of free plugins - there's pretty much always a plugin for everything. You can sign up for a free hosted version of WordPress at http://wordpress.com , though it has paid upgrades, or you can download the self-hosted version for free at http://wordpress.org . You could even go with a webhost (like http://dreamhost…

Wordpress had 6 "mandatory security update" releases in 2011 alone - http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions . It doesn't seem to have had a secure design from the outset. Worse still, ordinarily one might advise "keep up to date", but wordpress had a release backdoored ( http://www.cgisecurity.com/2007/03/wordpress-websi.html ) once, so keeping up-to-date isn't without its risks too. I've been giving tumblr a…

A huge thing people forget with WordPress is that most .org-powered sites are on shared hosting. Simple little bugs make it easy to hack an average WP site, but just setting things up right can solve a ton of issues. I'd recommend the digwp.com security recommendations. The book has better info but is pricey.

Re: Ask HN: Best blogging platform?

#20

Post by phzbOx »

jacobwg wrote: post #5

WordPress - it has excellent usability as a core product, but its real power comes from the large library of free plugins - there's pretty much always a plugin for everything. You can sign up for a free hosted version of WordPress at http://wordpress.com , though it has paid upgrades, or you can download the self-hosted version for free at http://wordpress.org . You could even go with a webhost (like http://dreamhost…

I don't agree with wordpress. Wordpress is like a middle-ground with 'lots of features' vs 'easy to use for no tech people'. If you want something really simple to get started, tumblr rocks (You'll have something running in minutes). If you want to hack your blog with lots of custom features, just pick whatever blogging library in your favorite language.
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