Choosing a Great Blog Program

There are many different types of blog programs available to today's beginning blogger. Many people decide to blog to make money through advertising, but before you can start blogging, you need to have a program to run your blog. What programs are available, and which ones are the best blogs using?

Before shopping around for a blog program, you need to organize your blog. Think about what your blog topics are going to be. Do you want to blog to make money or simply to have a place to record your opinions? Once you have a few ideas, it is time to find a blog program to host your blog!

There are two main types of blog software available today. The first type is independent blogging software that you need to download and install onto a Web server. The second type is hosted blog software. If a blogger uses a hosted blog, the data is saved on the server of the software company. Either way, the way your blog looks is going to be determined by a set of templates that the program has predetermined. You will select a template for your blog and enter your data. Your posts will then be stored in a database, which will allow your readers to search your blog.

Here are some blog sites and a short review of the plusses and minuses of each one:

Blogger is one of the oldest blogging tools. A major plus of using Blogger is that it is free, and you can have your blog set up in less than ten minutes. It has many templates you can use to set up your blog, and it also uses Audioblogger, which allows the blog writer to use your phone to put audio recordings onto your blog. One of the downsides of Blogger is it is difficult to customize without a knowledge of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. This is a great tool for the beginning blogger, but the best blogs usually leave Blogger once they get started.

Typepad is a blog program that is divided into three levels: Basic, Plus, and Pro. The Pro level allows customization and group blogs. All three levels allow you to build lists that are connected to a URL. Here is a way to use your blog to make money. You can use these URLs to drive traffic to sites where you have profitable advertising. There is a monthly cost involved with Typepad, but you get an easy to use program with many plusses.

Blogware is a third blog software package. Again, this program can be difficult to customize, but the templates have many options available. Blogware is sold through resellers, so you will want to shop around for a good price, as the prices will vary. Blogware is rare in that it will allow you to create some pages that are not blog pages. This can be helpful depending on what you want to do with your blog.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of blogging programs. When you are ready to start your blog, start by shopping around and seeing what features you are going to want on your blog. Thing through your blog topics, and have fun!