which platform to choose to create your blog? 🤩💻📳

 Platforms for creating blogs are powerful educational tools. They provide students and teachers with the opportunity to collaboratively create and exchange knowledge and ideas in the form of an online journal. We have considered online platforms for blog management and implementing network communication.

TUMBLR

This platform is a website that serves as a platform for both microblogs and regular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This internet platform has a specific list of languages available for use, among which the Ukrainian language is absent. Therefore, knowledge of the English language is necessary to use this platform. During registration, users should indicate their interests and immediately subscribe to pages proposed based on their preferences.

When creating their own post, the user is presented with options for choosing the publication format (text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, or video). When creating a post title, the author can use both regular text and GIF images, which, as mentioned in previous sections, attract the attention of network users. Additionally, there is an option to add a survey in the text of their publication. It is important to select the duration of the survey, which can last from one day to a week. Within the content of the post, images, videos, links, as well as hashtags, can be added, allowing users of this platform to find and view the post.

WordPress

WordPress is a flexible platform for creating various websites, including blogs. It is worth noting that this platform offers users a wide range of possibilities, including ease of use, a free base for blog creation, post editing regardless of their publication time, blog view statistics, spam protection, and more.

Indeed, in just a few simple steps, one can create and design a blog since WordPress offers the use of a large number of ready-made templates for users of different age groups and for different blogging purposes. The platform's basic functions include a subdomain, i.e., the presence of the platform's name in the blog link (for example, if the blog is named "Teen’s life" and the user has not subscribed to a paid plan on the platform, then the link to their blog page would be teenslife.wordpress.com), and 1 GB of space to upload their materials (images, videos, gifs, etc.).

We note that the service also has a paid tariff plan that provides access to advanced features. This broader spectrum of actions includes options ranging from independent development of custom design to the integration of special plugins, allowing the publication of a large number of posts, images, videos, files, unlimited in size.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a platform for maintaining online journals (blogs). Each user can customize their blog to their liking, using various templates, fonts, and colors. LiveJournal also allows users to create their own plugins and extensions, thereby expanding its functionality.

Among the main actions available on this online platform are:

• Creating a blog and posts where text, images, videos, etc., can be shared.
• Commenting on posts by other registered users of the platform.
• Viewing statistical data of the blog and publications.
• Adding friends by using the 'subscribe' function to follow each other's blogs.
• Communicating with friends in post comments as well as through private messages.

We'd like to highlight the additional capabilities of this blogging platform. In a post, users can add both their own media files and files from the platform's album. Additionally, it's possible to embed posts from social networks like Instagram and Twitter. Furthermore, within a post on this platform, users can interact with the Canva Internet platform, which has significant functionality (such as creating resources of various formats: video, photo, logo, presentation, online board, interacting with artificial intelligence, etc.). In other words, a user can create something in Canva and publish it in their LiveJournal post. Other features include creating and publishing polls, dividing a finished post text into sections, setting an emoji status for the author at the time of post-publication, opening or closing comments, publishing a post for all users (guests of the blog) or only subscribers, etc.

Currently, the popularity of using this platform has significantly decreased, and it's not among the top five most relevant platforms for creating blogs. This could be associated with factors such as dependence on servers, which affect the availability of the blog on the internet. Additionally, the presence of a large amount of spam and inactive accounts creates communication problems, among other issues.

Blogger

This platform is considered one of the best free options for managing personal blogs. The program's interface is quite simple and understandable for every Internet user.

The platform is multifunctional, especially considering it is free. For instance, users can select styles, colors, and font sizes, customize the color scheme of their blog, and add or remove pages, sections, and even individual widgets on the control panel. Additionally, there is an option to add comments to posts and a function to hide comments. Moreover, the platform provides ready-made blog page templates, making it convenient since by simply clicking on a preferred template, the blog's author can acquire a well-thought-out page design. If the style is suitable but not the images, everything can be changed in less than a minute, making it hassle-free. Furthermore, users can view data regarding their blog's traffic statistics by pressing the 'Statistics' button. This reveals information about the number of regular readers, publications, and comments, categorized under headings such as 'Overall,' 'Today,' 'Yesterday,' 'This Month,' and 'Last Month.' This feature is beneficial for both bloggers and teacher-bloggers, allowing them to check if students have visited the page or engaged with the blog post texts.

We'd like to highlight the capabilities of creating posts on the Blogger platform. Here, users can title a post not only as a text message but also using emojis. Within the post text, one can format text, select various text colors, and insert links to other internet sources, images, special characters, and even videos. In the publication settings, users can add special tags, i.e., words by which network users can find your blog, edit the publication link (it can be permanent or specific to a particular post), add a location or geotag, edit comment publication settings, and more.

After publishing a post, it can be edited, and moved to trash (deleted), and users can even view their post and blog as a regular user rather than the author. This allows for spotting any flaws in the blog.

Certainly, there are certain limitations on the Blogger platform, such as the inability to publish large-sized files and somewhat outdated templates. However, considering all the aforementioned features, it can be stated that this platform is among the top five most frequently used online platforms for creating blogs among internet users.

Which platform do you find the best to use? Write your ideas below!