Comparing Blogging Platforms

So when I think of blogging, I think of WordPress. The designers in my life (my wife and my best friend) both swear by it, though when I peak at their sites, they have their own domains and control them. Then again, they mainly use their sites as their online portfolio, meaning they match up far more with the idea of a “webpage” – static information to come back to later to see the same as before. Regardless, for people getting going on a blog, or even a site in general, I know they often recommend WordPress. One that I think may have been recommended from my wife and then through the grapevine to the writer: http://justflipthedog.com/ This WordPress blog is a good example of one that has grown and been taken over fully by the author to the point of now having book sales linked out, and other things, but starting from a simple WordPress.

The advantages of a WordPress site are in the fact that it is so easy for a user to come in and add content. And, as Professor Keeley pointed out, the purpose of a blog is content. When my wife does freelance work, she often recommends WordPress because she is only being hired to help set up a site to get it going, or to redesign it – the updating of content will have to be done by someone on staff with an organization. These people may not be particularly technology trained, but WordPress has an interface that, especially once configured by someone who knows what they are doing, allows for easy updating.

I have been thinking about starting a blog lately, and already this class is making me change my thoughts about using WordPress – I am liking the idea of Tumblr. Because when I think of a blog, I think of current events, or updates from a life, but I kept trying to think what I would make a blog look like. The type of writing I would really want to be doing is fiction, exploring a world I am building working towards writing a novel. I have tried a webcomic sort of approach, but my artist and I felt we really wanted a lot of content written first so that it would flow more. We were envisioning a blog sort of release of content (and we were even using WordPress), but to attract readership the amount of content we felt we would need was overwhelming.

However, Tumblr has a very different feel. If I wrote stand-alone short snippets, which is often what I have in mind, I could not only post them in a venue that feels appropriate, but I could more easily attract readers. And if they like what they are reading, I would be planning on having more like it. As I write it. But one post, even, all alone, can still exist in a mix on Tumblr. Like this one that popped up randomly as I was looking at the site: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/prose. Perfect.

So I guess, to more clearly state, the pro to using WordPress is how many tools it has, and yet how user accessible it is. The downside is that it really begs for content additions – otherwise the tools are a waste, as is the whole thing in many ways. Although free has its perks… With Tumblr, the pro is that it is free from this feeling that your own content is the whole world of the site. Indeed, it almost is removed from the conception of a blog as a webpage, until you really drill in and go to one person’s Tumblr. However, this is also the downside – you can get lost in the flow of the other content out there. It is a very competitive atmosphere.