List of Best Blogging Platforms in Kenya. A blog (a truncation of “weblog“) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, “multi-author blogs” (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other “microblogging” systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Types of Blogs
There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written.
Personal blogs
The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or commentary written by an individual, rather than a corporation or organization. While the vast majority of personal blogs attract very few readers, other than the blogger’s immediate family and friends, a small number of personal blogs have become popular, to the point that they have attracted lucrative advertising sponsorship. A tiny number of personal bloggers have become famous, both in the online community and in the real world.
Collaborative blogs or group blogs
A type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are organised according to a single uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy. In recent years, the blogosphere has seen the emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and resources, both to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and to attract a larger readership.
Microblogging
Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many users. It has captured the public imagination, in part because the short posts are easy to read on the go or when waiting. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications. The resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and, by far the largest, Weibo.
Corporate and organizational blogs
A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business or not-for-profit organization or government purposes. Blogs used internally, and only available to employees via an Intranet are called corporate blogs. Companies use internal corporate blogs enhance the communication, culture and employee engagement in a corporation. Internal corporate blogs can be used to communicate news about company policies or procedures, build employee esprit de corps and improve morale. Companies and other organizations also use external, publicly accessible blogs for marketing, branding, or public relations purposes. Some organizations have a blog authored by their executive; in practice, many of these executive blog posts are penned by a ghostwriter, who makes posts in the style of the credited author. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities.
Aggregated blogs
Individuals or organization may aggregate selected feeds on specific topic, product or service and provide combined view for its readers. This allows readers to concentrate on reading instead of searching for quality on-topic content and managing subscriptions. Many such aggregation called planets from name of Planet (software) that perform such aggregation, hosting sites usually have planet. subdomain in domain name (like http://planet.gnome.org/).
By genre
Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, journalism blogs, health blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), gardening blogs, house blogs, Book Blogs, fashion blogs, beauty blogs, lifestyle blogs, party blogs, wedding blogs, photography blogs, project blogs, psychology blogs, sociology blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs, legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs), or dreamlogs. How-to/Tutorial blogs are becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a splog.
By media type
A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs. A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a phlog.
By device
A blog can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person’s personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.
Reverse blog
A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write. There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a web forum.
Blogosphere
The collective community of all blogs and blog authors, particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks), and backlinks. Discussions “in the blogosphere” were occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. Because new, untapped communities of bloggers and their readers can emerge in the space of a few years, Internet marketers pay close attention to “trends in the blogosphere”.Blog search enginesSeveral blog search engines have been used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines (defunct), BlogScope (defunct), and Technorati (defunct).
Blogging communities and directories
Several online communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers. Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance, Blogster has a sizable community of political bloggers among its members. Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, “with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.”
Blogging and advertising
It is common for blogs to feature banner advertisements or promotional content, either to financially benefit the blogger, support website hosting costs, or to promote the blogger’s favorite causes or products. The popularity of blogs has also given rise to “fake blogs” in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.
As the popularity of blogging continued to rise (as of 2006), the commercialisation of blogging is rapidly increasing. Many corporations and companies collaborate with bloggers to increase advertising and engage online communities towards their products. In the book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, Henry Jenkins stated that “Bloggers take knowledge in their own hands, enabling successful navigation within and between these emerging knowledge cultures. One can see such behaviour as co-optation into commodity culture insofar as it sometimes collaborates with corporate interests, but one can also see it as increasing the diversity of media culture, providing opportunities for greater inclusiveness, and making more responsive to consumers.
Here is a List of Best Blogging Platforms in Kenya
Here is a list of the best Blogging Platforms used by Kenyan bloggers today.
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes.
Initial release date: May 27, 2003
Developer(s): WordPress Foundation
License: GPLv2+
Repository: core.trac.wordpress.org/browser
Operating system: Unix-like, Windows, Linux
Stable release: 6.0 / 24 May 2022; 58 days ago
Programming language: PHP
Blogger Blogspot
Blogger is an American online content management system which enables multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed through a subdomain of blogspot.com.
Created by: Evan Williams
Launched: August 23, 1999; 22 years ago
Written in: Python
Medium
Medium is an American online publishing platform developed by Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. It is owned by A Medium Corporation.
Founder: Evan Williams
Employees: 85 (May 2017)
CEO: Tony Stubblebine
Date launched: August 15, 2012
Available in: English (specific publications can be in Spanish, French, and other languages)
Native client(s) on: iOS and Android
Tumblr
Tumblr is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs. Bloggers can also make their blogs private.
Website: https://tumblr.com, https://tumblr.com/
Founder: David Karp
Founded: 2007
Alexa rank: 36
Headquarters: New York
Owners: Yahoo!, Automattic
Founder: David Karp
Wix
Wix.com Ltd. is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools.
Founded: October 5, 2006, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Headquarters: Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Owners: Fidelity Investments (7.9%); BlackRock (7.5%); Flossbach von Storch (7.0%); Baillie Gifford (6.6%)
Number of employees: 5,929 (December 2021)
Subsidiaries: DeviantArt; OpenRest; flok
Founders: Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, Giora Kaplan
Twitter, Inc. is an American communications company based in San Francisco, California. The company operates the microblogging and social networking service Twitter. It previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service.
Founded: March 21, 2006, San Francisco, California, United States
CEO: Parag Agrawal (Nov 29, 2021–)
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Founders: Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah Glass
LinkedIn Pulse
While LinkedIn may not be an ideal platform for bloggers, it does provide a blogging platform called “LinkedIn Pulse.” The purpose of this blog is to publish company news and updates which are related to business content. You can create your own author page on the network and start publishing your articles through them.
LinkedIn is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job seekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs.
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, United States
Founded: 2002, Mountain View, California, United States
Founders: Reid Hoffman, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Eric Ly, Konstantin Guericke, Allen Blue
Subsidiaries: Linkedln Ireland Unlimited Company, Glint Inc,
Parent organization: Microsoft Corporation
Edublogs
An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking.
Are you a student or a teacher? Then Edublogs may be the best option for you. Edublogs is a blogging platform popular and widely used for educational services.
Blog.com
Blog.com is a blogging platform with all critical features of the other blogging platforms. By creating a blog on this platform, you will be using the nabaleka.blog.com as your domain type.
Blog.com offers solutions so you can create a blog for free, and with a monthly payment will be added some benefits that are available only to paid members.
Network Solutions
Network Solutions (NetSol) is a platform that allows users to develop or get expert support to build their own sites. NetSol allows users to use their own code, free website and hosting package, use great templates, full-time support, and eCommerce plans available. With the platform, one can blog about several topics, and do business with advertisements and marketing options available.
Squarespace
Squarespace, Inc. is an American website building and hosting company which is based in New York City, USA. It provides software as a service for website building and hosting, and allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify webpages.
Founder(s): Anthony Casalena
Registration: Required; subscription needed for certain features
Employees: 1,143 (2021)
Launched: January 2004; 18 years ago
Headquarters: New York City, New York
Traded as: NYSE: SQSP
Weebly
Started in 2006, Weebly has since been providing solutions for those who want to create a blog or even a simple free site. To create a free blog at Weebly, you create an account, then log in and choose one among a lot of free templates available.
Weebly is a web hosting service, headquartered in San Francisco. Weebly is a subsidiary of Block, Inc.
Customer service: 00 1 844-493-3259
Founded: 2006
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Parent: Block, Inc.
Founders: David Rusenko, Dan Veltri, Chris Fanini
Site123
Site123 is a platform that allows users to create and have their websites and blogs hosted securely. Bloggers enjoy the ease of blog-management built-in Search Engine Optimization Tools and PayPal integration among other features that give an exceptional blogging experience. With PayPal integration, bloggers in eCommerce and those who sell products on their sites/blogs enjoy easy and secured checkouts. SITE123 is the most intuitive and easy to use website builder on the market. We handle everything from website structures to design to make sure you focus
HubPages
Hubpages is a free blogging platform which is very useful and accessible. The Hubpages is one of the 100 most visited internet sites and even allows you to make money from advertising and affiliate marketing. You do not need technical knowledge to use this service. With Hubpages, it is straightforward to publish your blog for free.
HubPages is an American online publishing platform developed by Paul Edmondson and was launched in 2006. Hubpages acquired its main competitor, Squidoo, in 2014. In 2018 Seattle-based content company “TheMaven, Inc.” acquired Hubpages.
Founded: 2006
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Owner: TheMaven, Inc
Founders: Paul Deeds, Jay Reitz, Paul Edmondson
LiveJournal
The Livejournal is a virtual diary that is proud to have many features that are only found in more complex blogging platforms. In your Livejournal blog, you can have multiple authors, and it allows comments, posts and polls calendars.
LiveJournal, stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities.
Founded: March 1999
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Parent organization: Rambler&Co
Buy Me a Coffee
Buy Me a Coffee is the best way for creators and artists to accept support and membership from their fans. Buy me a coffee is a service for online content creators that they may use to receive tips and donations to support their work. While the title is “Buy me a coffee,” subscribers are donating money to you. It is essentially adding a donate button to your website or content, but with a little more subtlety.
Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, U.S
CEO: Jack Conte (May 2013–)
Founded: May 2013
Users: 3 million monthly active patrons
Employees: 400 (2021)
Founders: Jack Conte, Sam Yam