The 10 Best Blogging Platforms

Do you want to blog but you don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re already a blogger and you’d like to check out other platforms and their offerings? Blogging is common place these days but new people are discovering and jumping into platforms like WordPress everyday.
We’ve gathered ten of the best blogging platforms around, along with some resources for things like themes, plugins and tutorials. Take a look at the best of the best and share your favorite resources or platform of choice.

WordPress
WordPress

1. WordPress (Self-Hosted or Hosted)

WordPress, as most of you likely already know, is the current king of blogging platforms. It’s easy to use and very flexible. In fact, it’s such a flexible platform that it’s commonly used as an outright content management system. What really makes WordPress stand out, in addition to the previously mentioned, is the sheer number of free and premium themes in addition to the level of community support.
To the best of my knowledge, no other platform offers the number of themes or level of community support. It should also be noted that WordPress offers two versions, self-hosted and hosted for you.
Tumblr
Tumblr

2. Tumblr (Hosted)

Tumblr isn’t really considered to be a full-on blogging platform, but rather a healthy cross between semi-micro-blogging and full-on blogging (think mini-blogging). You can really use it as you’d like though and it definitely has a decent and growing selection of themes.
Blogger
Blogger

3. Blogger (Hosted)

Blogger has been around for quite awhile, bought by Google in 2003. Although Blogger has made many improvements over the years, people making the choice between it and WordPress typically go with the latter. That isn’t to say it’s a bad platform, it might just not offer more advanced users the features they’re looking for. Blogger is a good choice for those looking for a hosted platform and an easy setup (none really) to get started.
Posterous
Posterous

4. Posterous (Hosted)

Like Tumblr, Posterous is intended to be a quick and easy way to share thoughts and media. Blogging via email is baked right in as it was built for using it that way and integration with other social media services such as Twitter and Facebook make it a solid cross between micro-blogging and full-on blogging.
MoveableType
MoveableType

5. MovableType (Self-Hosted)

MovableType is a powerful blogging platform like WordPress and is used by some very high-traffic blogs such as Cameron Moll, the Huffington Post and even Gawker’s blogs. MovableType’s big advantage is how easy it is to run multiple blogs on a single install. It still lags behind WordPress in some aspects but when they brought the platform to the open source arena, it’s made some amazing improvements. The move to open source also helped develop the community, which will make or break a platform.
If you know of some great places to get free or premium MovableType themes, let us know in the comments and we might add the source here.
ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine

6. ExpressionEngine (Self-Hosted)

ExpressionEngine (EE) is a feature rich and powerful platform that, while used for blogs, is also used for much more complex sites thanks to its flexibility. Like MovableType, it boasts multi-site publishing capabilities across multiple domains or even subdomains.
While ExpressionEngine is, quite simply, amazing, it also comes at a price. A single “Freelancer” license comes in at $99.95, with Non-Commercial at $149.95 and Commercial at $299.95. The combination between open source and being a commercially paid product results in a higher level of support and a well developed product.
Joomla
Joomla

7. Joomla (Self-Hosted)

Joomla is really a full CMS and it’s easy to create almost any kind of site with it such as a regular website for businesses, eCommerce, blogs or even social networks. It’s powerful, easy and has a great community backing it. Like some of the other platforms listed here, Joomla’s extensions really make it shine and give it more power and flexibility.
http://drupal.org/
http://drupal.org/

8. Drupal (Self-Hosted)

Drupal and Joomla are actually quite similar (in terms of purpose), though Drupal seems to be more oriented towards community type sites. Drupal is certainly one of the best blogging platforms around but it also, like other platforms here, has the flexibility to run just about any kind of site. It has a passionate community and a huge collection of powerful modules (like plugins) that give it even more power. In regards to theming, however, it’s more so on the difficult end of the spectrum.
Sites such as The Onion and even Ubuntu use Drupal, among many other massive sites.
Penzu
Penzu

9. Penzu (Hosted)

Penzu is an exciting, up and coming new platform that takes a different approach to blogging. The idea behind Penzu is that not everyone wants to share their blog ideas with all the world, as such it’s built around privacy with the ability to share posts if you’d like.
Penzu is most similar to a journal or diary, though integration with social media aren’t left behind. Media management and post writing are thoroughly enjoyable as the platform is focused more around you writing (like you would in a notebook, journal, etc) than spending time messing about with a control panel (as you would in WordPress).
LiveJournal
LiveJournal

10. LiveJournal (Hosted)

Although LiveJournal doesn’t seem like it belongs on this list, it apparently still has quite a following. Like most of the other platforms here, LiveJournal is free. This platform is very community driven, with the idea of heavily sharing and making use of other social media. As far as I can tell, unless you’re a paying customer, you’ll have to deal with ads as well. Despite a few drawbacks, it is still apparently a popular and very usable platform worth checking out.
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