Wix's drag-and-drop system is made with HTML5 in mind
If
HTML5 matters to you then Wix is well worth a look; it claims to be the
only drag-and-drop site building platform with HTML5 capabilities. On
top of that you'll find over 500 designer-made templates as well as
plenty of additional features and apps, along with top-grade hosting so
you can rest assured your site will be there when you need it.
You
get 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth with a free Wix account; if you
need more - plus other features like your own domain and Google
Analytics - then take a look at their premium plans.
Yola boasts flexible layouts and no third-party ads
Yola
limits you a bit if you have grand plans for your blog - you can only
have two sites and three web pages with its free plan - but the upside
is a healthy 1GB of both storage and bandwidth, and your site won't be
littered with unsightly third-party ads.
Getting started
is easy, with dozens of customisable templates to choose from, a
straightforward site builder for putting everything together, flexible
layouts and drag-and-drop widgets, and if you have the skills then you
can edit your CSS in order to fine-tune your site's looks.
Call your content into any design with the Contentful API
No
one knows how they're going to want to display their articles a few
years down the line, so Contentful provides a way to separate your
content from your design. It calls this an "API-first" approach, so your
content is stored on their servers and you can call it into any design
or platform as you like. So if you want to build a completely different
site in a few years time, it's easy to bring everything in as it's set
up to be portable from the start.
Jekyll
takes your raw text files, which may be written in Markdown, if you
like, and turns them into a robust static site to host wherever you
want. It's the engine behind GitHub Pages, which means you can host your
blog on there for free.
Making your blog with Jekyll
avoids the need to work with technicalities such as databases, upgrades
and so on, so there are fewer things to go wrong, and you can build
something completely from scratch.
WordPress is the most popular free blogging platform
If
the folks over at WordPress are to be believed (and they seem suitably
trustworthy sorts), it now 'powers' over a fifth of the internet.
It's easy to see why: on WordPress.com,
you can rapidly create a new blog entirely for free, with a reasonable
amount of customisation; alternatively, most web hosts provide WordPress
as a free single-click install, and more info on what's possible there
can be found at WordPress.org.
Newcomers
might find WordPress a touch bewildering initially, but it's the best
free option for anyone wanting a great mix of power, customisation and
usability.
Tumblr is one of the easiest free blogging platforms to use
To
some extent, Tumblr feels a bit like a half-way house between WordPress
and Twitter. It offers more scope than the latter, but tends to favour
rather more succinct output than the former.
Decent
mobile apps make it easy to submit content to a Tumblr blog from
anywhere, though, and it's reasonably easy to customize your theme to
make it your own.
Tumblr also has a strong social
undercurrent, via a following model combined with notes and favourites.
Although be mindful that the service has quite a few porn bots lumbering
about, which may give the faint-of-heart a bit of a shock should they
check every favourite off of their posts.
Blogger is one of the longest running free blogging platforms on the web
You'd
hope with a name like 'Blogger' that Blogger would be a decent free
service for blogging. Fortunately, it is. Sign in with your Google ID,
and you can have a blog up and running in seconds, which can then be
customised with new themes. It is, however, a Google service, and so be a
touch wary, given how abruptly that company sometimes shuts things down
that millions of people were happily using.
Medium is a free blogging platform set up by Twitter's founders
Medium
is the brainchild of Twitter's founders, and appears to be their
attempt to do for 'longreads' what they once did for microblogging. The
result is a socially-oriented place that emphasises writing, although
within an extremely locked-down set-up. It's a place to blog if you want
your words to be taken seriously, and if you favour a polished,
streamlined experience. But if you're big on customisation and control,
look elsewhere.
Svbtle is a stripped-back free blogging platform for longform writing
Describing
itself as a "blogging platform designed to help you think", Svbtle is
fairly similar to Medium in approach. It again strips everything right
back, resulting in a bold, stylish experience that pushes words to the
fore. It could easily become your favourite blogging platform for the
act of writing, but it again relies on you also wanting something
extremely simple and not caring a jot about customisation.
One
of the veterans of this list, LiveJournal (like Blogger) started life
in 1999. Perhaps because of its age, it rather blurs the lines (the site
says "wilfully") between blogging and social networking.
The result is more of a community that affords you your own space, but that also very much encourages communal interaction. It is
possible to fashion something more private, but to get the most out of
LiveJournal, you need to be prepared to delve into discussion as much as
writing.
