As far as I am concerned, there is only one contender and that is wordpress ..self hosted of course.

No one can take it away from me and i can post whatever I want.

Hey, I think the best platform for blogging is WordPress, too.
It is simple to learn how to use, and you can choose a nice Free blogging WordPress Theme for your site.
There are also lots of free plugins you can use to make your website better.

Wordpress is by far the best blogging platform and it's great for newbies.

Having a self hosted wordpress blog on a domain you own is the best way to go. If you want some domain authority right from the start, you can buy a domain with page rank.

Wordpress, on your own domain, with a custom theme or header is the only way to go IMHO.

imho the guys n gals who make real money tend to use Wordpress, self hosted.

Clean sweep here... WP wins this debate.

When you use the online services, you run the risk of losing all of your content. Whether it's Empower, WordPress.com, Blogger, or any one of the other online services, they are in full control of your work. If they decide to remove your blog, you lose all of your search engine listings.

Your best bet is to install WordPress on a website owned by you. Then, you are in full control.

Self-hosted Wordpress, hands-down.

I thought Empower Network was built on WordPress? Has that changed?

wordpress is the way forward :-)

I agree with the majority here.

Wordpress stomps all competition in nearly all fields.

if you want to use free and best blogging platform, i suggest you to use blogger.It gives you a lot of facilities like SEO.

but I would always suggest owning what you build :-)

That way it cannot be taken away

I agree that self hosted wordpress is the way to go. In the past I used xsitepro, but after learning how to use wordpress, I think is the easiest, and most flexible platform. Just make sure you choose your hosting provider wisely.

If you want a free blog, I'd say go for Blogger, it's super easy and actually not bad for a free blogging platform.

If you don't mind paying for your own hosting+domain you should definitely go for WordPress. Also very easy but MUCH more versatile

Cheers!

Jan

Choose wordpress, they have great support and plugins

Self-hosted Wordpress, and if you want to save money, you can use blogspot.com with a domain buy from GoDaddy.

Hands down.... Wordpress. Self hosted of course.

I gives you the flexibility and resources of plugins, themes, and widgets that give you a ton of variety. There is usually enough free (not like beer) resources that will allow you to do most of the things you'd want to accomplish.

Even when you have to pay for something there's usually something for every budget.

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Hey Alli & all you other Warriors!

It's funny but I already had this topic on a list of things I wanted to write about on my blog and then today I noticed this thread. That kind of pushed me into writing the article now, rather than later.

I certainly don't mean any offense toward any of those who responded in this thread, and you are free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling most of you recommending Wordpress probably haven't ever seen or used the Empower Network blogging platform.

Which, by the way, to answer Jesus Perez's question above... No, EN just recently launched a new proprietary blogging platform. I tried to cover all that in my blog post. The thing is, the new ENv2 platform was designed to cater to specific needs and while Wordpress is still the leader right now, my personal opinion is that ENv2 is already becoming a major contender and the reasons may not be that clear to everyone yet.

I use both, by the way. I had my personal WP blog first and now I use both platforms for different purposes. Please feel free to check out my blog post here... WordPress vs Empower Network – Which Blogging Platform Is Right For You?

I welcome any feedback in the comments section on my blog or by replying in this thread. Hope you all find my article informative and helpful.

Highly ranked by who? Who's talking about it besides those who are promoting it with their referral links?

Most of the warriors will recommend you wordpress for sure because I have observed that most of them use it as a blogging platform. I started by blogging through Blogger.com though I am not a regular blogger but I think if a newbie starts with blogger.com, he/she will be able to operate wordpress more effectively later.

Word Press is good, but difficult to set up and manage.

Empower Network is easy to set up, and easy to use.

Get messages, videos and photos up and to social media in seconds.
Hands down I would go with Empower Network Blog.

I saw a stat that 19% of the net runs wordpress. Impressive.

Wordpress gets my vote. Don't rely on Blogger or any other site that is housing your blog content. They might start losing profits, close the website, and you're stuck and have to start all over again.

Absolutely WP self hosted, but the only downfall of WP is security so make sure you lock it down, plenty of WP security info around the forum to help you out with that.

I agree with everyone else but I wanted to make sure you understand there's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

Wordpress.org is yours. It's self-hosted, you own it and you can post whatever you like. With wordpress.com you get a domain name but your site isn't self-hosted they have strict rules about using your site to make money. I hadn't seen anyone mention the difference yet so I wanted to be sure I added that. I made the mistake of signing up on the .com version and finding out later you couldn't do business there. Luckily I hadn't really done anything yet so I was able to switch to wordpress.org easily.

There are 2 or 3 hosting solutions that have a one-click kind of set-up for wordpress.org that makes it really easy to get started. It's a learning curve like anything else, but I know nothing about websites and I to all my stuff myself.

Wordpress by far, why in the world would you ever use empower network?

You can get a better blog for free just by using blogspot, gives you a free blog with a lot of pre-built juice, plus a lot more control.

Don't listen to the empower network hype, choose wordpress or blogspot and laugh your way to the bank.

I will vote to blogger, It is very easy to use and manage. The most important thing is Its a Google Product So it is also good in term of SEO. Wordpress has lots of security issues and security plugins are almost paid. The plugins of wordpress are very resource hungry and use a lots of your CPU.

I see a few people already gave you suggestions wordpress I'll add to it. The reason is you have more control and it's open source plus there are tons of plugins and themes you can leverage to your benefit. Good luck on your selection.

Anyone who said anything other than a self hosted platform ...slap yourself upside the head.

Stuff third-party sites for business use, any of them, period.

Wordpress - The most serviced, very user friendly and getter better all the time.
Just make sure you secure it properly.

I've always used a self-hosted wordpress blog. You have more control over your content. They keep on making it better too.

have to agree wordpress is the most reliable affordable professional solution

we launched a news website on wordpress and it was so slick compared to previous experience with Joomla/Drupal and others CMS

Easily wordpress by far

My 2 cents... self hosted Wordpress is my #1 choice.

If your question is "what is Best Blogging Platform?"

I definitely vote Wordpress with self hosted. No doubt!!

The blogging platform that you use will have literally nothing to do with how well YOUR site will be ranked.

So if your concern is purely ranking, then it really doesn't make a difference which platform that you use.

I'm new and I'm sticking to wordpress...the free version for now till I have money to set up hosting thru it.

I use the content management system that I created over the last decade. It uses pretty much the same open source tools that WordPress uses, but it is not a target for hackers and that means I can put up sites and not monkey around with attacks and other problems that are so common with WordPress.

Pardon the redundance but:

Go with a self-hosted Wordpress Blog

The plugins at your disposal are remarkable!
The themes are VERY professional.
The learning curve, however, will blow your
mind the first time you look at your WP back office.

But like with many things learning curves
can be straightened out.

The only thing that matters with a blog is whether or not you actively post good content to it, not where it is hosted. You would have equal success on a free Blogger or Tumblr blog as a Wordpress blog hosted on a paid hosting site, assuming it contained useful information and had enough high authority backlinks. Hosting a blog on a paid site is no guarantee of success.

Wordpress hands down. Joomla and Drupal is also a fine platform.

Tumblr: for teens.

The decision always comes down to Blogger Vs WordPress.

Blogger is you are low on budget.

Self-hosted WordPress if you have the money to invest and want a customized feel. of WordPress.com is you also want to avoid some additional work.

WordPress all the way.

Hi Ali, right now the best website creation tool is Wordpress. However, Empower Network is powered by WP.

I have had my own blog since 2006 and have grown quite attached to it.

However, if I was just starting out online, I would be using the EN Blog [Kalatu] hands down.

Why?

It ranks fast!

Why?

Because there are thousands of members who are 'actively' promoting great content on a daily basis with the Empower Network Blog.

This is the 3rd version of their blogging system to date.

They did make some mistakes in the past:

1- The 1st Version was wordpress and it ranked quite well in the beginning but they didn't 'educate' their members enough back then on how to post 'quality' content.

So in a nutshell, there were a lot of Newbies running around doing stupid stuff with their blogs and this eventually lowered their ranking.

2- EN Version 2- Not a WP Theme. Didn't work as well as WP.

3- Kalatu: This is by far the best version that they have made so far. It is powerful. My blog has been around since 2006 and if I [hypothetically] take my content and put it on Kalatu instead of my own blog right now, I would be getting way better results with traffic & exposure.

So why do I still keep using my own blog instead of Kalatu?

Because I am a stubborn SOB who is too attached to his own blog.