Blogging software selection

Posted July 14, 2009 - 20:49 by isohelpline
Blogging allows share your views with the world. There many ways you can blog about, one of the most popular one is to use blogging sites. You can open an account with public blogging sites like blogger.com, squidoo.com, twitter.com etc. and start blogging right away. The benefit of these sites is that you do not need any thing else than an internet connection.

The other way is to start your own blogging site, you will need to choose the right blogging software that meets your need of bloging. I tested two most popular software, WordPress and Drupal.

I tested WordPress on my site. It was very easy to install WordPress even on shared hosting. Majority of individual users prefer WordPress.  WordPress can also be used to build basic web sites. Many free themes are available for WordPress. WordPress community is also very active and you get prompt support. WordPress is very basic blogging software, you need extra modules for everything even providing a user registration. There are many modules available but their compatibility is an issue. You will need to work around diffent options to get things right.

Drupal was also easy to install and configure but a bit difficult than WordPress. Drupal is feature rich and has almost all features you need in its basic installation. Themes and modules are available if you want to add additional features. Drupal community is also very active but many times you do not get response. If you search the community base you will find many questions unanswered for last three or more years.

I choose Drupal for this site simply because it had required features and I was able to customize it to meet our requirement. Publishing e-Books, creating new content type, payment options etc..

One thing I am still looking is Paypal payment without recurring options but periodic subscription. Subscription should also allow one time payment and let user decide if he/she wants to pay again after expiry of that period. This is actually a limitation in PayPal setup which allows minimum 2 periods for subscription payments.

A recent release from WordPress states that they will not allow paid content in WordPress installations and hence if you want to use your blogging site for paid reviews, do not use WordPress.

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