Help Me Choose the Right Blogging Software

July 13, 2012 3:15 PM

I need help choosing blogging software that is affordable, not overly complex but still feature-rich for an image-heavy site that will feature blog posts and encourage community interaction. I have a domain and am planning to start a business that my site will support. I will be building and posting using OS X and iOS. I used to use iWeb. I didn't love it, but it made adding and manipulating media (photos, video, audio) easy, and it wasn't difficult to tweak existing themes to make them uniquely my own. I loved the WYSIWYG interface, but haven't seen any other blogging software like this. I'm quite adventurous regarding technology, so the more plug-ins or widgets to choose among, the better. I may eventually have a podcast, allow call-in comments, etc. I do not have a lot of money to put into the blog right now, but will invest more down the line. I need to start out affordably using a platform that will grow with me. There are so many choices out there that I am simply stuck. Please help me narrow my choices!
posted by Piscean to computers & internet (9 answers total)

WordPress is pretty awesome.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:16 PM on July 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wordpress has a lot of available photography themes. There are more than 10,000 free plugins and probably another 500 paid ones.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:28 PM on July 13, 2012

The thing to remember about WordPress plugins is that they often contain security vulnerabilities, so it's important to choose them wisely, and keep WP up to date.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:30 PM on July 13, 2012

Typepad offers wysiwyg and while I was on it from 2005 to 2010, I found it the best for fine tuning control over how photographs would be placed, captioned and sized. This may have changed since then. I do miss it often.

Wordpress, which I use now for one of the blogs, is okay but its wysiwyg isn't as good though I am using the free version.

Both of these allow you to do free test runs.

Blogger is the worst for photographs.
posted by infini at 3:37 PM on July 13, 2012

Another vote here for WordPress, I think you'll find it meets all of your criteria and more.
posted by joinks at 4:11 PM on July 13, 2012

Nthing WordPress, which, when installed from Wordpress.org on an outside site, is 100 percent free to use.
posted by ronofthedead at 4:20 PM on July 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe give SquareSpace a shot? Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin seem to think it's really great, sponsorship of their show aside. It's got a nice WYSIWIG interface, I'm told. I've only messed around with it a little bit, but it seems interesting. It's completely hosted, a la Tumblr.
posted by nrobertson at 9:39 PM on July 13, 2012

Squarespace is pretty good.
posted by freya_lamb at 6:19 AM on July 14, 2012

Thank you, everyone!
posted by Piscean at 4:24 PM on August 13, 2012