The Ideal Blogging Platform

[TygrBright]

I'm gonna cross-post this to the Lounge, since it looks like Bloggers is a very small group with very little discussion, so... here goes:

I'm looking for a blogging platform to build a private blog, shared only by about 3 dozen individuals. Not public.

I'm looking for free/hosted.

I need to be able to set up all the user/author accounts in advance.

I need it to have a built-in email subscription feature that enables, not an RSS feed, but simple HTML emails. I also need to be able to initially subscribe folks to this, AND GIVE THEM AN UNSUBSCRIBE OPTION.

Any other bells or whistles would be lagniappe, but these features are essential.

Weebly does not have a subscribe function, although you can enable an RSS scraper.

WordPress.com does not allow you to set up user accounts and permissions in advance.

Squarespace doesn't have a "free" option.

Blogger is... well... Blogger.

Any other suggestions?

hopefully,
Bright

[rocktivity]

1. Wordpress.ORG would be your best best

but you'd have to pay for a domain and hosting, and get an plugin that would allow you to set up the e-mails.

http://wordpress.org


rocktivity

[TygrBright]

2. Yep, that would be the solution if we didn't need free domain/hosting service!

I manage a couple of blogs and sites using WP.org and have been generally pleased with the tools available.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to front the cost of a domain name and hosting for this group, I'm working as a volunteer and it's very much a "let's see if this is a useful intragroup communications strategy" at this point. It may not even be viable, but it's better than most of the social media solutions which may promise "privacy" in a not-visible-to-the-public sense, but nevertheless have user information to do with as they will.

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

appreciatively,
Bright

[WeAreKochs]

4. Yammer

It doesn't sound like you need a blogging tool. For internal use, you may be better served by an enterprise collaboration or document management system like Yammer or Sharepoint. Given your resource constraints, Yammer may be a good solution. It is more of a Twitter like system than a blogging platform but, last time I checked, it allowed for file attachments that could hold larger form documents. It is probably the best free alternative to higher priced knowledge management systems.

Yammer is owned by Microsoft. While they "have user information to do with as they will", it is designed as a business tool and they are unlikely to piss off their far larger business customers by trading on your data.

[thelyricwriter]

5. Just Being Honest

You get what you pay for in blogging.

If you're serious about getting people to sign up, you need a real blog. Subdomains rarely show in search and when they do, it's usually tied into a big volume keyword.

You can get a URL and hosting for around $50 a year and that's with GoDaddy. There's cheaper options out there, but I'd rather be with a reliable host.

I'm just speaking from experience, I tried that route 10 years ago when I first started in web development. I wasted a lot of time and energy. It's well worth a $50 investment.

With that said, if you can drive traffic a LOT of traffic there, you may see a few. But if your plan is SEO and keywords, your own domain is the way to go.

[aswanson]

6. Wordpress

I really like this platform. I think it is extremely user-friendly.

[Baobab]

7. You should consider buying a Raspberry Pi or similar and hosting it yourself

a $35 RaspberryPi makes a very powerful web server that can run all sorts of web applications, and the cost is very little, then you just need an Internet connection and you can run software that propagates any IP address changes pushing it into your domains DNS record.

You can install wordpress in around ten seconds - it will pull in all of the dependencies and you should be ready to go.

Seriously.

[salmannaseem07]

8. Blogger

i think blogger is best its free and have unlimited space

[Yinnyccp]

10. Blogger

Vote for blogger. it is much better than other platforms for gaining visibility from Google search.

[ace2pace]

11. Wordpress

I would always suggest Wordpress over Blogger. You can leverage lots of plugins to help you build and rank a blog

[RandomAccess]

12. Have you found what you needed?

Why do you need to set up user accounts in advance?? You can set them up immediately in WordPress, as soon as it's installed.

It's been a very long time since I bothered with WordPress.org -- but I'm quite sure that you didn't HAVE to have your own domain if you used that. At least not back when I did use it.

I wouldn't recommend anything but WordPress because of the incredible array of additional functionality you get from all those wonderful plugins. And ease of use, of course.

[walikali]

14. walikali

you can buy a free domain from infinity.net.

[twpvoyageur]

15. Another one

Have you considered Joomla? Apparently they're really good.

[SinisterPants]

16. Joomla is a full-blown CMS...

"Content Management System" and not appropriate for most bloggers/

For your freebie hosted options it still comes down to WordPress or Blogger.

Blogger has the obvious advantage of being tied into the Google multi-verse. and being extremely user-friendly. OTOH, they are...well...Google.

WordPress has a bit steeper learning curve, that means it also has more options.

For mom: Blogger.com (or BlogSpot, same thing)It's slick and user friendly and connects to a whole ecosystem of cool shit

For me: WordPress.com. It has more options and flexibility, but is still free and easy.

For my wicked smart niece who is going to set the world on fire: WordPress.org.

You can do damn near anything with this that you can imagine. If you are serious about your message, you 100% need your own domain name and hosting service, and that's going to cost real money.

As mentioned, Go Daddy for hosting, and WordPress.org for software.

There are also approximately half a bazillion tutorials available for each

[aleesiazane]

17. Wordpress

Blogger no doubt is nice but believe me, WordPress does wonder when used along with right plugins.