Partial Knowledge about Blogging Platforms is Dangerous

People have the wrong impression about free blog platforms. They read & quote a bunch of articles written biasedly by people who only write to earn money. You cannot criticize them, they are presenting their perspective but without proper research and 'Google" you cannot come to a proper conclusion.

Let me Explain....

Blogging Platforms such as Tumblr & Blogger are free for users who wants to have an online presence. Blogging may not the the thing of the past but its the thing of the present and the future. Over the last decade the number of blogs have seen an insurmountable growth. Let me put that into perspective, 'There's a blog born every half a second'. Don't take my word for it ? Read it on CNET.

Custom Domains

Both the platforms Tumblr & Blogger provide for custom domains & even your own subdomains. Initially you get a sub domain with the hosted platform but after paying a few $$ (Rs 630/yr - this varies with host) you get your own custom domain. For instance this blog your reading the article from is hosted on google's server with custom domain.

Themes, Layout, Plugins

First lets talk about tumblr, they offer plenty of both free/premium templates for tumblogs. Heck there are even Reputed sites on both platforms (for instance Twitter uses tumble to display its service status) and many professionals & Tech Companies are on tumblr too. FYI Tumblr is owned by Yahoo Inc.

Blogger: Blogger does provide for basic themes by default that you can choose from. If you want to skin your own blog then you can either customize it by uploading either free/premium blogger templates available on the Internet.

The best thing about these two platforms over wordpress.com blogs is you don't need to pay to customize your blog. In tumblr you can edit the css & html accordingly (sadly no javascript). But in case of blogger you can edit em all. This is the reason why i choose blogger over tumblr. Alas both have their own advantages and disadvantages but I believe blogger brings more to the table than tumblr.

Control over your blog

People yelling about sayin 'you don't have control over your blog' listen. These free platforms can offer only so much, you can't expect them to offer you their control panel dashboard on a silver platter. That'd be a wreck....

Power of XML | Cross Platform

For those who think once you've started you're stuck with it. You're wrong. You can move around your blog on any platform you link thanks to xml technology which is a cross platform scripting language supported by many blog platforms. 

Are you not satisfied with tumblr ? Export all of your blog posts, comments, tags, labels, categories everything to an xml file which when imported to other blog platforms (wordpress, blogger) automatically imports without any fuss. Yes its that simple.

I presonally have moved my blog from tickrnews.wordpress.com (hosted) to wordpress (self hosted) then to blogger (hosted) and haven't had any problems at any stage.

I hope you understand & the next time someone asks you which platform to choose, don't scare them let alone demoralize their Independent thinking.