Which blogging platform should I use as a developer?

May 20, 2021

So if you’re someone who has decided to start a blog, first, kudos on taking the initiative. All great things start with an initiative. The natural next steps are to think about

1. the content that you’ll put out there for your audience
2. how you’ll publish the blog to the world

The content is yours to think about but in this post, we’ll take a look at the different options you have to get your ideas out to the world as a blog.

There are three different types of platforms to publish your blog and we discuss each of them below.

1. Third-Party Publishing Platforms

This involves third-party publishing websites like Medium, LinkedIn, HubPages, etc that host your content on their platform.

Medium is the most popular solution here. You’ve in all likelihood already visited Medium at some point. Medium works like a social media platform in the sense that you create a unique profile like https://medium.com/@yourname and then you can publish articles under your profile.

Pros:

• Fairly easy to use. No setup or coding, just signup and publish

• Exposure to a large built-in audience. For example, Medium has about 100 million monthly active users. If you’re just starting out, nothing is going to beat this potential reach.

• Integration with other social platforms ensures easier reach for content. For example, on Medium, your Twitter followers can also become your Medium followers.

Cons:

• Because you don’t own the platform, the audience isn’t yours either. So if tomorrow either your blog is taken down or the publisher is ‘not cool’ anymore or goes offline, you lose your audience.

• Third-party platforms provide only a limited set of features so you cannot customize if you’d like your content to be presented in some other way that isn’t supported

Verdict?
Use third-party publishing platforms if you’re looking for the easiest solution and mostly what you care about is a place to publish and then get a link to share.

2. Static Site Generators

Static Site Generators allow you to convert plain text into static websites or blogs with minimal effort. These static websites are then served to the client in the form of static HTML files. This blog that you’re reading right now is a static website generated using Jekyll.

Pros:

• Full flexibility. Because you have access to the code, you can customize how your content is presented.

• Static websites are cheap and secure. You can host your static website for free on services like Netlify and GitHub Pages if you’re starting out. Since these are just HTML files, you can also serve them from Dropbox or S3.

• Fast page load times. Since you’re serving pre-rendered HTML pages, the load time of static websites is very fast and leads to a great experience for readers.

Cons:

• No server-side functionality. If you need things like comments, contact forms, etc that usually require server size functionality, you’ll have to use third-party solutions for each.

• There is a (small) learning curve. You need to get familiar with the static site generator you are using and in most cases Markdown to set things up. There are usually no intuitive GUIs to help.

• Adding new functionality or changing the way things look will require coding it yourself. This can make it less user-friendly.

Some of the popular static site generators are the following:

• Hugo
• Jekyll
• Gatsby

Verdict?
If you’re a developer(or have technical expertise) and only need to publish static content and nothing fancy, a static website should be your go-to option. Or if you need to tailor your content presentation exactly as you like, static websites are your best bet.

3. Content Management System(CMS):

Content Management System or CMS allows you to create, manage and modify content heavy websites without touching the code at all. In contrast to static site generators mentioned above, CMS generates dynamic web pages which means that your HTML is generated just before being sent to the client. It couples both the front end and back end in a single package.

Wordpress and Joomla are some popular CMSs. In fact, Wordpress is so popular, about 30% of the websites on the web are created using Wordpress.

Pros:

• Dynamic websites. CMS allows dynamic websites and so if your blog needs the use of forms or user accounts, CMS would do it for you.

• Ecosystem. CMSs like WordPress have a lot of pre-developed plugins and features that can be reused. This makes it possible to develop complex functionality in little time.

• Ease of modification. It is easier to both add new functionality using plugins and to modify the presentation of content as you don’t need to work with CSS (everything is through a GUI).

Cons:

• Limited flexibility. Since you cannot modify the code, there is limited flexibility you have in terms of how much customization you can make especially if you’re looking to add specific features.

• More server resources. CMS built websites use more server resources than static sites and hence, the cost to serve will increase

• Maintenance. You’ll have to make sure that your software, plugins, themes, and extensions are all updated and remain compatible. It also makes the website an easier target for hackers.

Verdict?
If you need dynamic websites, complex functionality, or don’t have the expertise of working with code, your go-to option should be a CMS.

Conclusion

It is important to choose the right blogging platform that fits your goals. However, it isn’t something to lose your sleep over. Whichever platform you choose from above will likely be good enough. Content is the real thing that you should be focusing on.