I’m going to fire things up with a round up on which blogging platform to choose.
You may first want to consider whether you have your own servers either physically or you own domain space online i.e. self-hosted, if not then you will need a hosted service. Secondly, are you looking for a system for personal use or for a wider community of users like in a school?
Self-Hosted
Personal
Those who need a personal blog on you own server/web space service really need to consider WordPress.org This is a free open source solution which leads the market. This could be used to set up a single blog by a teacher to experiment with at home on their own system or for a school to introduce a blog and to see see how it goes. However, you will soon find this limiting and would need to introduce collaboration, which means more users.
Multiple Users
If you need to set up blogs for more than one user on your server, e.g. for pupils and teachers then there is WordPressMU. The MU means Multi-User and again this a leading free open source solution. There are of course WordPress alternatives but the scale of WordPress means not only is it free but it is well supported. WordPress MU is my recommendation for a school wide service as it will allow you direct control over the options.
Hosted Services
Okay, so what if you do not have your own server? Or don’t want to or can’t install your own blogging software? Or the IT Tech people are unwilling to support it?
Well there are two leading choices and a third that may appeal to those involved in education, which I shall come to later. The first is WordPress.com, this is a hosted service of the WordPress MU software, with most of the features for free and with optional paid upgrades, like unlimited private blogs (though keep in mind the first 35 are free – plenty for each subject department and more!).
WordPress’s biggest competitor is Blogger, which is owned by Google. Both companies will allow each user to set up multiple blogs under different names. Here are some of the pros and cons of each:
- WordPress gives greater adminstrative control when blogging as a team – allowing options like ‘Administrator, Editors, Authors and Contributors’, whereas Blogger only allows ‘Administrators and Non-administrators’.
- Blogger does allow for posts to be made by email, which some team members might find easier to use and reduce the learning curve for contribution.
- Blogger also allows you to give better control on the design of your blog using themes (an existing set of fonts, colours, layouts) that are editable, whereas WordPress has a range of existing themes, but editing options are quite restricted.
- However, WordPress does have a spam protection feature called Askimet.
There is a more detailed comparison of Blogger v WordPress.
Personal
My conclusion is that if you are looking for a hosted blog for yourself then Blogger is the choice, as it will give you greater creative control and deleting spam yourself shouldn’t be an all too burdensome task. I have a blogger account for my own personal meanderings outside the world of education, this helps to keep work/private lives distinct if need be too.
Multi-user
However, if you are wanting to blog as a team or group, or are seeking to introduce blogging to your school, where consideration of e-safety is paramount, then the powerful editorial control and the spam protection features of WordPress.com make it a better choice. Though hang on, there is another even better choice for schools…
Educational Blogging
Now I did say there are three main contenders, the third is Edublogs.org which is another free online hosted service. This system also uses the WordPress MU software and actually pre-dates WordPress.com, though what this offers is a system more geared towards teachers and students.
It will for example allow teachers to create blogs for their students, and allow them to choose whether to create the student as an Administrator or one of the other roles (same as those listed for WordPress.com above). Further, you can quickly add 15 students to a blog in one go! Their EduBlogger blog is a fantastic resource on getting started with blogging and web 2.0, there are also some breezy, and they do go very quick, video tutorials on setting blogs up.
So with these features (It still has the spam protection WordPress.com uses) and offering to be part of a wider and established educational blogging community, with the support that comes from it, is why Edugblogs.org gets my recommendation for use in schools (for those not hosting their own blogging system). It is also why I have choosen to host this blog on Edublogs. Though the ideal solution for a school is to use WordPressMU on your own servers.
Further reading
Here is a more detailed comparison of blogging systems including those other than Blogger and WordPress, like the paid for TypePad. Also further factors to consider when making a decision and PCWorlds Chart of blogging platforrms.
Coming Soon
How to subscribe to various blogs posts using RSS/Atom rather than visiting each blog site seperately to find out if there are any new posts. Also later on I shall take a look at feed readers or news aggregators, to help you get through all those blogs you have subscribed to in one place, such as Google Reader, My Yahoo, NetVibes, Bloglines and NewsGator.
