Designing and automating your blog can be hard especially if you are not a designer of programmer. But thanks to the hard work of others you can have a beautiful and professional looking blog. Since the most popular blogging platforms are open source there are a myriad of add-ons, plug-ins and new themes that you can use to modify your blog.

Self Hosted vs. Internet Based

The real battle here is between self hosted blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Moveable type or internet based blogging platforms like blogger. Anyone who has blogged before knows that there are many drawbacks when using Google’s free blogging service Blogger. Most professional and semi professional bloggers use a self hosted blogging platform because of the wide variety of options, plug-ins and styles available. Word press in particular has a lot of use in the search engine marketing industry, giving it a robust platform for search engine optimization.

Self Hosted

http://www.livejournal.com/

http://www.typepad.com/

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.movabletype.com/

Internet Based

https://www.blogger.com/

http://www.xanga.com/

http://www.myspace.com/

Designing your blog is one of the most fun parts of creating a blog. This is your chance to be unique and define what you and your blog stand for. The best way to obtain a design is by using a template. There are many websites on the internet that offer free templates for every blog platform. Listed below are various blog template websites to pick a design from. If you cant find what you want here then search the internet to find additional themes. There are almost limitless themes on the internet that can be used.

Blog Templates

http://www.createblog.com/

http://www.thestylearchive.com/

Word press

http://themes.wordpress.net/

http://www.staska.net/2007/03/27/top-30-wordpress-plugins-in-blogosphere/

http://www.topwpthemes.com/

Moveable Type

http://styles.movalog.com/generator/

Live Journal

http://bottledsky.com/features/lj/

http://themes.wordpress.net/

Once you’ve installed your new blog design you will want to customize it. Like blog templates there are many plug-ins available for every blogging platform. Depending on your needs there are many things you can do with plug-ins, everything from wacky to professional. Especially in the search engine world there are a lot of options. And just like with everything some plug-ins are effective and others are well….not.

Plug-Ins

Word press

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

http://wp-plugins.net/

Moveable Type

http://plugins.movabletype.org/

http://www.staggernation.com/mtplugins/

Live Journal

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2004/06/18/live-journal-plugin-pack-release-3/

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