BLOGGING! I didn’t even know what that meant a few years back until one of my friends told me “Dude check out my blog, I’ve posted about the party last night”. I was like “WHAT? What the hell is a blog?” And he went on to explain everything about it. What I still remember him sayin was “its like your own site” & honestly speaking that’s what got me really interested in it. After all who doesn’t want their own site. His explanation ended with him giving me his address – XYZ.multiply.com.
And that was my introduction to the world of blogging! I was so amused by it that I wasted no time in creating my 1st blog ID makingmemories.multiply.com after I went through his blog. And it was a great experience too for about a year. On Multiply you actually feel that you have your own website because the layout is such. For a 1st time blogger it was very easy coz its neat & uncluttered. Ofcourse at that time I didn’t know anything about WORDPRESS or BLOGGER or LIVE JOURNAL or the numerous other blogging platforms.
Like I said after a while I got bored with Multiply coz it didn’t seem to grow at all! No matter how many new articles I posted, there were hardly any viewers to read them & there was no means to promote the blog except for publishin it on orkut(there was no facebook that time). The ones who did visit my blog were asked to create an account if they wished to comment on my posts & this was really annoying. How many of us will go through such trouble just to post a comment? And so began the quest to find something new. And I did exactly what Im sure most of the 1st time bloggers do, I went to Google & typed “best blogging platform” which obviously gave me lotta results but something that caught my eye was that WORDPRESS & BLOGGER featured top in most of the results. This was 3 years ago & when I went through the reviews I found that most of them said that Blogger was better than WordPress but only by a whisker. The only confusing part initially was the difference between WORDPRESS.COM & WORDPRESS.ORG. I just couldn’t understand why one site had to different domain names 😀
I went through every review for days &so easily narrowed down my options to the two, but was still confused coz I didn’t wanna start blogging like on multiply & change all over again. So I did something that many would call stupid, I created an identical id on both the platforms. And I published my 1st two posts on both so that I could get a feel of both. And though everyone at that time said Blogger was better I found WordPress much more comfortable so I deleted the other one & kept WordPress.
And boy am I happy that I made the right choice. Coz the last 2 yrs have proved me right. Today you type that same search on google “best blogging platform” & every result will tell you that WordPress is undoubtedly better. And I agree with that coz I’ve personally experienced it.
When I began blogging on WordPress I began with gusto, posting articles on a regular basis, & everytime my visitors number increased I was even more thrilled coz multiply had just the members counted. The themes at that time were very limited & so were the widgets which was the low point for me. After a while though I hit a writers block & just didn’t know what new to post & so took a break from blogging for about a year. I came back & I was amazed to see that WORDPRESS had changed a lot with newer themes, new publishing features, facebook twitter integration & new layouts but what thrilled me the most was the initiatives that they had taken to encourage bloggers with their “The Daily Post” initiative. That really got me hooked & got me to loving blogging again! Now I check everyday to see the topic of the day & also read other blogs featured in the “Freshly Pressed”. This makes it so much easier than searching for other blogs on Google, I can search them on WordPress itself!
So its very easy to know that Im really happy about being here & don’t planning on changing anytime soon. And so the reason for my this post is to tell anyone who searches on Google for “best blogging platform” & finds my post that yeah at present WORDPRESS is the best! Don’t think twice before you start your blog here & this is from me who is a total neutral. Happy Blogging!
A note- I have to mention this coz this is something that really impressed me. I was having some trouble with my blog(which in the end turned to be my own stupidity) So I wrote to WordPress Customer Support. Frankly speaking I never expected a reply for them coz how often do Customer Supports help you in anyway. Boy was I wrong. The very next day I received a reply from a DARYL from WP giving me the exact solution to my problem!!!! Unbelievable!!!! So they actually support you.
I agree with you, WordPress is great. I have wordpress.org, the self-hosted thing, but I used the regular, free version before.
Back in 2005 I started blogging in Yahoo, they had something called Y360 and very much loved by its users. Around 2007, Yahoo shut it down. It was very strange. However, all the people, me included moved to Multiply.
So … I too blogged at Multiply for some time. I got so fed up with it. That Inbox made me feel like it was a chore … an obligation to make the rounds and comment. it got more and more tiresome and took all the fun out of blogging.
I was involved in some group there … we made themes.
I feel that blogger (being a google product) brings more traffic to blogspot 🙁 WordPress is cool too!
hmm…your thought process is very logical, and I faced the same problem when I started blogging.
But I switched from wordpress to blogger because I felt the interface of wordpress to be a little less user friendly than that of blogger.
but am finally on blogger, and the layouts, themes are amazing!!!