Blog Basics

Traditional blog services

The two biggest traditional blog services are WordPress and Blogger. Both allow you to create and customize your own blog, and both offer good options for creating all types of posts. The main difference between the two is the options they offer and their ease of use.

WordPress

WordPress is the most popular traditional blog service. It offers advanced blog customization features that let you control your blog's appearance and manage comments, blog post drafts, and more. Some of its advanced tools are designed for people who are familiar with HTML, which is a special computer language used for formatting websites. Even if you know nothing about HTML, you can still customize your WordPress blog's appearance with templates, or themes.

The downside to these options is that WordPress's blog management interface, called the Dashboard, can be a little confusing to navigate at first. However, WordPress has extensive support tools to help you get started.

The WordPress dashboard, or interface

Watch this video from the WordPress team to learn about getting started with WordPress. For more information about WordPress, review the other videos and lessons in the Learn WordPress section of the site or go to the official WordPress Support page.

Blogger

Blogger is the second most popular traditional blog service. It offers slightly fewer blog customization and management features than WordPress, but it still includes plenty of ways to control your blog's appearance, including a large selection of themes. Because it includes fewer options, Blogger's interface is simpler than WordPress', so you may find it easier to use.

Blogger is a Google product, so if you already have a Google account getting started with Blogger will be especially easy.

The Blogger dashboard, or interface

Watch this official video from Blogger to learn about creating a blog. To learn more, visit the Blogger Help Center or watch more instructional videos on Blogger's official YouTube channel.