Loading...WordPress and Tumblr are two popular and commonly used blogging platforms. If you are a newbie to blogging, then you would be rather confused about which blogging platform to choose. So, before you consider one platform, it is essential that you understand the primary differences between each of them.
Tumblr is basically a social networking site that also serves as a blogging platform where you can post blogs easily. Tumblr, released on April 27, 2007 has more than 69 million blogs and over 29 billion blog posts currently. WordPress was launched on May 27, 2003, much before Tumblr was established. WordPress is a very popular CMS (Content Management System) and a free open source blogging platform preferred by many website owners. Now this is not a logical reason to choose either of them. You need to go into the depth of various benefits offered by Tumblr and WordPress.
Tumblr-pros &cons:
Tumblr is more personal and oriented towards social media. It is free and is hosted by Tumblr Inc. So, you need not pay for hosting services. It has a simple and user-friendly platform that allows you to post content and multimedia objects like videos, photos and images. Tumblr allows you to directly post pictures onto your blog from the Instagram application on your phone. So, it is a great attraction for young bloggers who love sharing pictures on their blog. Tumblr’s features can be accessed right from its dashboard interface.
You can quickly sign up for a Tumblr account, select a Tumblr theme that aptly suits your blog category and start blogging. You can also review other posts and follow them. Similarly, other bloggers and readers can like your blog and re-blogit. This will generate a lot of traffic to your blog and increase your chances of becoming familiar online within a short span of time.
While the above are some of the advantages of using Tumblr, it has its own limitations. Tumblr gives various themes and allows you to customize your template to some extent. But it is difficult to add pages, menu bars, search boxes and plug-ins. You might face a hard time working on HTML codes, JavaScript and CSS to make changes to your template. Tumblr doesn’t have a commenting platform, but you can install the Facebook or DISQUS commentingplatform. Tumblr has faced downtimes, which is a major setback to the site, making users doubt its reliability.
WordPress-pros &cons:
WordPress is a good Content management System and allows you to update your blog from any place with Internet access. You can customize your WordPress blog and it comes with a good commentingplatform. There are basically two types of WordPress- WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
WordPress.org: It is a free to install software, and you can easily make changes to it as it is an open source platform. You can get a unique server and domain name. This makes it highly flexible and you get better control over your blog. It gives you access to an amazing collection of free themes, plug-ins and widgets. If you want more, you can buy the premium themes from WordPress. You can edit codes in the themes and give it an entire new look. WordPress is suitable for SEO purposes as it has SEO plug-ins. You can import your old blogs on other sites to WordPress.
But the drawback is that it is self hosted, so you have to pay for web hosting services. The problem arises when you don’t upgrade your WordPress to the newer versionsreleased. To enjoy flawless security and the latest features you have to manually upgrade it. Most of the time, you have to reset your theme after upgrading WordPress.
WordPress.com: WordPress.org is the base for WordPress.com. It is free and you can create an account in no time. Your choice of themes, widgets and plug-ins are limited to only those offered by WordPress. Only WordPress is authorized to run advertisements and you can’t sell on your blog. WordPress.com again has some negative sides to it. You have to pay for additional upgrades,getting a domain name, increasing your storage space and making changes to your theme’s CSS.
Conclusion:
Tumblr gives your blogs a personal touch and lets you socialize. So it will be a good choice if you are trying to establish a product or brand name and reach out to the public. But if you are going to talk about your business and want your blog to look more professional, then WordPress will be fine. Both these blogging platforms are good to use and will benefit you in different ways. Your final decision should be based on your understanding of the purpose behind your blogging, the type of blog you are writing and the audience you are targeting.