A blog or ‘Web Log’ was once a personal online diary where people would write about the many things that happen to them on a daily basis.

But soon, it has evolved into a ‘smart’ business tool, which if used correctly has the potential to bring in extra links, more customers & better visibility to a website.

Take a close look around you. Everyone has a blog. Be it individuals, corporate or Small to medium sized businesses.

If you have not started blogging yet, then it’s not too late to begin.

This brings us to the main topic here, ‘What’s the Best Blogging Platform?’

The Blogging Platform

The best thing about blogging now is that there are numerous high quality platforms to choose from.

There’s WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Typepad, Squarespace and more.

These can be further categorized into Free Blogging Platforms & Self hosted ones.

Your eventual choice should depend on a lot of factors. Here are some of them.

What is your goal? – Are you starting a personal blog that you will update once in a week or even less frequently? Then you can opt for a free blogging platform like WordPress.com, Blogger or Tumblr / Posterous. The advantages of going free are that you do not have to worry about hosting, domains or design. You just login and start blogging. A free platform also allows you the liberty to try blogging to see if it’s really for you.

What are you going to write? – There are some people who want to set up a portfolio to share their work. There is very little text on the site. So, you must opt for a more professional looking blog which in this case can be a self hosted one. You will have to invest in the domain and hosting though, which is not very expensive to start with. Feel free to email us to get advice on ad-hoc hosting solutions for bloggers.

If you are looking for recommendations then, WordPress.org is a great choice. With over thousands of design & plugin options, it makes life extremely easy even for the novice blogger.

With a WYSIWYG editor, you can see the way your content will be displayed and tweak it in innumerable ways to improve the presentability.

I hope that was helpful. There are a plethora of options for bloggers. The platform you select should largely be based on personal requirements. Do your research and choose wisely. Happy Blogging!

In a web development world that is largely dominated by LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl), Microsoft has always been an infant player. True, it has dominated personal computing and even enterprise computing up to an extent. But the web development ecospace has been an uphill ride for the computing giant, thanks to open source.

However, with the launch of its new WebsiteSpark service, it hopes to make inroads into this sphere of business.

WebsiteSpark is as close to open source as it can get. An extremely small price tag, superior services & free software license. What more can one ask for?

Website Spark allows small to medium sized businesses and start ups to leverage top notch technology & support at no upfront cost whatsoever.

So, what’s the catch?

Well, there might be none actually.

Let’s take a close look.

Inside WebsiteSpark

WhiteSpark has been modelled on the DreamSpark & BizSpark programs that have gained immense popularity in the past few years.

The program is an ideal platform for companies with fewer than 10 employees to get access to some free marketing and high end software.

Yes, WebsiteSpark offers free licenses for technologies like Visual Studio 2008, Expression Studio and Expression Web, and user and processor licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server along with free support from Microsoft & a marketplace to meet potential customers.

A small $100 fee is all that applies at the end of the three year term. Following this, a company may continue to use the products at highly discounted rates or choose to discontinue.

Nearly, all the developers who have used the service claim that it is one of the easiest ones to set up and with the support and tools on offer, it seems like a winner.

Why SMBs might benefit

If you are a small design or development firm, then the three year term may open up a whole new world of opportunities for you. You can benefit from the rapidly expanding windows hosting market and reduce a lot of costs which can otherwise eat away your resources during the first few years of operation.

In need of WebsiteSpark Hosting? All of Dade2 servers are WebsiteSpark ready, take a look at our offer