In Light of the Yahoo Purchase A Comparison of Tumblr and WordPress
Tumblr and WordPress are the two most popular platforms to choose from for hosting a blog separate from a company website. If you’re getting started, or wondering what to do in light of Yahoo's announced purchase of Tumblr, here's a quick guide on each platform to help you make an educated decision.
NOTE: To be fair I should mention that the third main platform is Google's Blogger. I'm not including Blogger in this comparison. My personal feeling is that it is not as feature rich and business ready.
First, answer these questions in preparation for the comparison:
How complex do I want setup and use to be?
Do I want to choose a theme or make some basic customizations? Do I want to pay for it?
How much HTML knowledge do I have?
Will my posts be short and image based or provide long, in-depth coverage?
Is reader feedback via comments important to me? Do I have time to monitor comments? Would I need the capability to approve comments before they are posted?
Do I want others to be able to easily share my posts (i.e. re-blog) or click back from a re-blog to my post?
Your answers above give a good foundation to assist your decision-making process as you review the pro's and con's of each below:
Tumblr is a free, feature rich blog hosting platform. Tumblr allow uses to post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from a phone, desktop or email.
Pros:
Ease-of-use, nice user interface that is easy to learn
Easy moderation capabilities of comments and followers
Customization capabilities available with HTML
Photos posted can gain a lot of visibility within the Tumblr community when using a tag
Integrated into Instagram app making it simple to post images to Tumblr via Instagram in one click
Cons:
What will Yahoo do? Yes, this is important to ask right now!
Tumblr is commonly used for “micro blogging” and therefore is not the best fit for long blog posts
Lots of porn and spammer use of Tumblr. Though this can be avoided, the platform has large volumes in those categories
WordPress, a blog and more. In their own words: WordPress started as a blogging system, but has evolved to be a full content management system and more.
Pros:
Ability to use the platform as a blog, website, and more
Thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes developed by a community for ease of customizing.
Ability to have multiple access levels for teaming including: administrators, editors, authors and contributors – great for a multi-author and/or company blog
Extensive formatting control
Massive use by large companies and small businesses
Cons:
Templates can be a challenge for basic user without coding skills to modify
SPAM comments unless you switch to a plug-in like Disqus(recommended)
Many enhancements that are available through WordPress cost money
With the free version, non-hosted version, you have no control over the ads that appear on your site
In summary, my suggestion is that if you are serious about blogging and content marketing, then WordPress is the clear winner. If you are a photographer or blogging is a side hobby and you want to focus more on images and connecting with a specific community, then Tumblr can be a good choice. This is a simplistic analysis, but, hey, it's a quick read and this is my opinion!
WordPress is tops for the massive amount of customization's and developer community, but you also need to know what you are doing to integrate customization's. Otherwise you need to hire someone to do the customization's for you. That being said, there are literally thousands of good folks that can do WordPress customizations!
Tumblr and WordPress are the two most popular platforms to choose from for hosting a blog separate from a company website. If you’re getting started, or wondering what to do in light of Yahoo's announced purchase of Tumblr, here's a quick guide on each platform to help you make an educated decision.
