TopTen has a very informative table on the top ten blogs available in terms of ease of use and best design and writing features.WordPress is ranked number 1 and Google’s Blogger is ranked 4. This article is about why Blogger and the online version of WordPress are right now the best free website with  free hosted  services on the Web.

Google Blogger

WordPress.com

Common Features For Both WebsiteTools - Wizards with dozens of templates for design of a stylish website - Pages allow integrating and extending an existing website - Or creating a new website with its own look and feel - Posts allow interacting with your users and customers on blogs with polls and comments – Pages and Posts have identical HTML + WYSIWYG Editors – Widgets, sidebars, headers can be laid out and customized by users – Tools to support images and galleries – Multiple users can have different roles in administering a site – Multiple blogs can be supported free from the same account

Now many might take exception to this anointing first rank to Blogger and WordPress.com . First the Social Media camp can argue that Facebook Groups, Google+ Pages, and the whole Tumblr environamong  others  offer users great and easy to use Web presence tools- especially where users want it to be among  their friends, acquaintances, and a wider span of “global” neighbors. What could be easier to get your event message out then a social media page?

There is no argument social media can be perfect tools  for publicizing local events, publishing albums of pictures+stories, and promoting/advertising activities or business. But problems start to  occur when the web announcement takes  more than one page  or special design flair or requires specific forms to be  filled out  and interacted with or fees collected. And this says nothing about  users wanting to customize and style their pages distinctly. Social media pages are often the first stage in discovering you need a website.

So then there is  a second tier of website suppliers. Companies like  SquareSpace, JimDo, Weebly, Wix, and Yola among others  offer real website creation capabilities including hosting services, subdomain names,  template based designs, menu-driven pages, and some sophisticated drag and drop tools for creating specific pages. As well  many of the major hosting services like 1and1 and Icdsoft offer their own website development tools which  speed up the wesite creation process. This is often a case of the Web development tools providers getting into the hosting service business or vice versa –  a hosting service adding on a quick  web development tool. But these “free” website development services vary widely in costs and features – some create pages but no blog posting services; some have free development costs; but charge for space and time on a quaterly or yearly basic; some have a basic development or operational feature set; but charge for extras.

An ideal situation would be the ability to create a starter website and operate it  essentially for free – no developer cost, no hosting service nor unique sub-domain name cost. And our argument is that two blog services, Google Blogger and WordPress.com, do provide the both the cheapest and the best web presence opportunities. You can go farther in creating your website[and if you choose so, blog] in these two services and with the lowest out-of-pocket costs.

Our argument for Blogger and WordPress.com is threefold. First, that CMS and blog development systems offer some of the most effective website development tools. Second, among the many very good open source CMS/blog systems, three tools, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are standouts.  And third, among the blog/web development tools offering nearly free hosting services, Google Blogger and WordPress.com lead that pack by  providing not only freewebsite creation [and later customizing, if you want] tools but also susbstantially free hosting space and services.

But there is another fundamental reason to consider Google Blogger  or WordPress.com. Both of these systems have made designing and customizing your own website very approachable and easy to master. Likewise the operation of the resulting website/blog is  also simplified and familiar to anyone who use word processing or email regularly.Finally there is an army of 3rd party developers and practitioners able to assist you for fee or free in developing and operating your websites – see the resources section at the bottom of this post.  The following slideshow provides the specific details and argues in favor of Google Blogger or WordPress.com as your first choice tool for website/blog development. Click on an the Gray Slide below to Advance to the next Slide:

As you can see from the slideshow there are a lot of shared features for each blog system. But also there is one key difference. WordPress.com has  a step up to free, enterprise caliber blog software  from WordPress.org[users include NYTimes, MarthaStewart, CNN amomg others]. Blogger does not. Thus, WordPress.com users have a path to  user hosted blog software which  is a)built on the  WordPress.com base as modeli, b) is Open Source , c)available for free download at any time from WordPress.org and d)is constantly being improved . In fact many of the improvements are derived from features first developed on the WordPress.com site.

In contrast, Blogger does not  have an open source version available for download.So in order to make Blogger truly enterprise caliber [Blogger is used by a number of vendors as official blog including Google itself] on par with WordPress,  Google has chosen  to open up Blogger to more sophisticated use of HTML, CSS,  JavaScript, Iframes, Flash, and  video among other web development features. This allows for some sophisticated refinements on Blogger sites.

In contrast some of these same  enterprise features are sold by WordPress.com as Premium extras such as CSS customization or video support. But do not begrudge that because the revenues gained on WordPress.com are used to support all the development work done on WordPress.org as well as WordPress.com. But as a potential blog user you have to decide which of these different approaches and the resulting feature differences  are critical to your  success. Here is a table of the detailed differences between Google Blogger and WordPress.com.

As a user and developer, ye Editor employs and develops for clients both Blogger and WordPress.com sites. Some decisions are straight forward – use of videos and forms at lowest possible costs indicates Blogger. Also Blogger has the advanatge of  the sheer number of design  templates available. On the other hand the ability to transition at a later date to an enterprise system that supports a huge variety of plugins and themes changes the nod to WordPress.com. Many times the choice is not just where you client is now but where do they want to be in  the future.

Summary

After 15 years, establishing a free Web presence has been finally been provided to end users in a set of  very approachable options. First, there are simple event and activity notice boards + gallery albums available  from Social Media like Facebook Groups,Flickr Image Albums and  Google+ Pages. These are perfect for getting one page notices out to friends and community at no or very low cost.

Next, web hosting sites have improved their website design and customizg services greatly. Most provide design tools that simplify creating pages with drag and drop ease of use and the opportunity to change or customize those designs online. As well, sophisticated web development software makers now provide good Web hosting services. The net result is that getting your first or improving your existing Web presence has been dramatically improved  in the competitive push between these two groups.

And at the top of the food chain are two services, Google Blogger and WordPress.com which provide the most bang for your $free buck. But  don’t be fooled. Although the costs for both Blogger and WordPress.com are among the lowest in the blog and web development business, the costs of planning for, designing and operating a blo/website g are very real and can become substantial organizational costs As websites becomes ever more vital to  businesses or organization,  the time and effort to run a good website cannot be ignored.

Finally, going with a blog does not preclude using other Web development  systems. Facebook Groups, and Goole Plus Pages still have a vital SEO and blog marketing role to play. Both Blogger and WordPress.com can be integrated with existing websites in a number of ways. Bottom line, Blogger and WordPress.com are attractive because they can be easily fit into a cost effective web presence.

Common Resources

Artiseer.com –  Blogger templates creation tool; also Drupal, Joomla and WordPress  for hosted blogs
Artweaver.de – Free photo editor in Photoshop style, great for getting images ready for blog use
BasicBlogTips  - good general advisories on blogging
iPhoto – Apple’s free Mac program is the best that Apple has besides Gimp and Picasa
Paint.net – free Windows photo editor  with neat  effects and fast editing
PhotoPosPro – another excellent Windows photo editor with lots of  image composition features
PhotoFiltre –  Windows photo editor with nifty filters and effects as well as fast editing
SpiceupYourBlog – great ideas and tips for Blogger and WordPress.

Blogger Resources

Blogger Account Limits –  some of the info n size posts, no. of pages, size of images,, etc
Blogger help – official support and help site
BloggerBuster – excellent templates, tips, and tutorials on Blogger
BloggerSentral – great set of practical and integration tipsm for Bloggers
Btemplates.com – a wide range  of free Blogger templates  in a variety of styles and formats
DeluxeTemplates – good selection of blogger templates
Tricks and Tips - Blogger coding and CSS tricks and tips

WordPress.com Resources
Develope for WordPress.com – how to develop tools and themes for WordpRess.com
WordPress.com Support – helps and support pages for WordPress.com blog usage
WordPress Themes – Free and Premium themes – the only source for WordPress.com blogs