Best Free Blogging Sites & Platforms

Blogging is one of the most effective ways for large and small businesses to generate new leads that convert into sales and revenue. There are countless success stories of entrepreneurs and businesses turning their ideas into multimillion dollar enterprises via blogging, although there are other reasons for starting a blog.

Online blogging and digital marketing has become exponentially more important in an era of social media and networking. The online explosion has generated over 200 million blogs worldwide. The best blogging platforms – WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr and other – each rank in the top 50 most visited websites.

The best part is that anyone can start a blog for free. There are dozens of free blogging sites, but not all platforms are created equal and some offer better opportunities for growth, exposure, and monetization. While self-hosted blogs require a unique domain and hosting company, they do offer huge advantages over even the best free blog sites.

Blogger and WordPress are the most used blogging platforms on the web. But do you know that there are tons of free blog hosting websites providing free weblog hosting? With these blog hosts, you can easily express your voice and opinion online from politics to what are the popular games out there today. However, some of you might have difficulties in choosing a suitable blog hosting site, especially if you are first time blogger. That’s why we have taken time to research and compile a list of top free blog hosting websites. Hopefully you can find it useful. 

Blogger

Free weblog publishing tool from Google, for sharing text, photos and video.

WordPress.com

Free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software. Includes custom design templates, integrated statistics, automatic spam protection and more.

Weebly

Weebly bills itself more as a website-creation system than something for solely creating a blog. It's based around drag-and-drop components, which enable you to quickly create new pages.

However, blogging is also part of the system, and you get access to customisable layouts, a bunch of free themes, and the usual sharing features you'd expect, to spread your words far and wide.

Postach.io

Postach.io claims it's the "easiest way to blog". It's from the people behind Evernote, and, naturally, is deeply integrated into their system.

Essentially, you just connect a notebook to Postach.io and then tag notes as 'published' to make them public.

However, you get some customisation, too, including a bunch of themes, the means to embed content from other sites, Disqus commenting, and the option to instead use Dropbox for storing content.

Tumblr

A feature rich and free blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates, bookmarklets, photos, mobile apps, and social network.

tumblr

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a vibrant global social media platform where users share common passions and interests. With hundreds of communities built around popular interests, like entertainment, celebrity gossip, music, food, travel, fashion, parenting, pets, and more, LiveJournal users express themselves through creative journaling and lively commentary.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a popular site for creating single webpages on your interests and recommendations. Even earn money for charity or yourself.

HubPages

HubPages is an online space to share your advice, reviews, useful tips, opinions and insights with hundreds of other authors. HubPages is completely free, and you can even earn online ad revenue!

Webs

Webs helps you make your own free website. Personal, group, and small business websites complete with photos, videos, and ecommerce.

Multiply

Users can create, share and discuss blogs, photos, videos and music with others as well as post reviews of movies and books, or share a calendar of events.

Weebly

Named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites, Weebly has an easy, drag & drop interface to create your own website. It’s free, powerful, and professional.

Blog.com

Blog host service with free and paid plans available. Features include one-click publishing and photo albums.

Squarespace

Build a website. Start a blog. Squarespace is one of the most stylish ways to put your content on the web.

Tripod

Easy to use website building tool for your professional or personal website and blog, web hosting, domain registration, email and more at Tripod.com!

Gather

Gather is the place where millions of people come for fresh perspective on what’s happening now. Gather Members can join in the conversation.

Xanga

Xanga is a community where you can start your own free weblog, share photos and videos, and meet new friends too!

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a vibrant global social media platform where users share common passions and interests. With hundreds of communities built around popular interests, like entertainment, celebrity gossip, music, food, travel, fashion, parenting, pets, and more, LiveJournal users express themselves through creative journaling and lively commentary.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a popular site for creating single webpages on your interests and recommendations. Even earn money for charity or yourself.

HubPages

HubPages is an online space to share your advice, reviews, useful tips, opinions and insights with hundreds of other authors. HubPages is completely free, and you can even earn online ad revenue!

Webs

Webs helps you make your own free website. Personal, group, and small business websites complete with photos, videos, and ecommerce.

Thoughts

A free blog community that allows people to upload photos, videos, podcasts and chat with friends and family.

Blogsome

Host offering blogs based on the WordPress multi-user edition. Many design templates available.

InsaneJournal

InsaneJournal is a simple yet very customizable online diary. It is built on open source software from Danga Interactive.

Edublogs

Edublogs lets you easily create and manage student & teacher blogs, quickly customize designs and include videos, photos and podcasts.

Blurty

A community site designed for adults, based on livejournal source code. Future plans are to add paid accounts with additional features.

Jigsy

Jigsy is another easy website builder which allows you to create a website in just minutes.

Terapad

Terapad is a complete website builder for personal, group and small business web sites with hosting.

Blogdrive

A weblog publishing service that is easy enough for a beginner and advanced enough for an expert.

Blogtext.org

Free service allows users to search other blogs, upload images, and create syndicated XML feeds.

Blogster

Blogster is a vibrant virtual community built and inhabited by people who love to blog.

Zoomshare

Zoomshare lets you build a free website, photo album, blog, email, chat, share and much more.

SoulCast

SoulCast allows you get to blog anonymously, uncensored and without constraints.

Blogigo

Blogigo lets you get your weblog in minutes. Its features include future dating for posts, an image gallery, syndication, and visitor statistics.

BlogHi!

Create your own free Blog with blogHi! You just need an e-mail address, and to follow the simple two steps sign-up process.

Kvepp.com

At Kvepp.com you can set up your own subdomain blog with just a few clicks, fast, easy and free.

BusyThumbs.com

BusyThumbs.com is UK-based free hosting service for moblogs. You can create your own photo diary and upload photos via MMS or online from a computer.

FreeBlogIt

FreeBlogIt offers free and paid service multi-user WordPress blogs. Design templates and support forums available.

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Tips to Create an User Friendly and Attractive Website

Good website is a rewarding outcome of several important elements encompassing design, content, navigation and functionality. Nowadays running a business website is one of the most important facets in the life of a company and therefore has to be intuitive, not overly complicated and engaging. Keeping your website user-friendly will greatly improve its performance, entice more prospects and boost sales for your business. 

The Web is growing every day and your competitors are getting smarter. A key law of marketing is to differentiate yourself from your savvy competitors. If you’re in an industry which has lots of vendor choices, then you have to ask to yourself how you can make your company get noticed, stand out, and attract attention of your target market.

Creativity in website is all about taking the ideas and the spirit of your company to the ladder of success and creating a powerful impact on your target market. Everything has to be just right: the logo, the icons, the color palette, the imagery, the graphics, the design of the page, the eye trail, etc. When all these elements are combined creatively you produce a powerful emotional impact on your visitors capable of improving your sales rate and revenue.

User friendly website is nothing but a website which is easy accessible and comfortable for a user to operate. The main reason for making a website user friendly is that it helps in increasing traffic on the website, which in turn leads to improvement of the site ranking. Making a website attractive is not enough to attract the people, the usability should also be good, otherwise the visitor will go from your website and switch to your competitor’s site. Just visiting and leaving the site in few seconds, this kind of traffic is of no good use. So making a website user friendly is very important because it is the face of your business especially if it is an online product purchasing company.

Some of the usable tips which should be kept in mind for making a website user friendly and attractive are as follows:

Implement a Smart Choice Of Colors

Colors play a significant role in making a website attractive and amazing. Each color has its own impact on each page. You should know the value and meaning of each color before you choose the right ones for your website. Never choose colors, which are unsuitable for the spirit of your business.

Colors plays a very important role in the website appearance, each color have its own meaning and value, analyse and read about each and every colour and accordingly decide your theme of website and colours which are to be exhibit on the website. Your website is certain to look attractive when you have used right combination of colors.

Keep Your Content More Simpler and Informative

It is important that you provide only simple and informative contents to your viewers. Do not test their knowledge of language or grammar through your content. People can identify your brand through your contents, so keep it simple and easy for them so that they can have a clear picture about your service or products through the same. Explain your services and products which your customers wish for, in a simply language, provide description with the help of pictures so that they can understand it easily. Using appropriate white space is also important, your content should not be very clumsy, it should have some appropriate white spaces which differentiates the words so that the content looks clean and proficient.

Create Something Well-Organized

Always try to keep your website well-organized. Make sure that your viewers can get all information easily on your website and do not need to dive under the sea to get some simple information. If the viewers find that everything is on its place, and they can reach all of them easily, then they would appreciate your effort.

Online visitors wanted to visit those website which is more organized and provide each and every information which they are seeking for. It’s a fact that the average page visit of a user lasts a little less than a minute. As the user is in rush so he will just visit your site and take a glimpse of your website, if he founds out that the website is more organized and everything is on its place then he gets the confidence that he can find out the correct information which he is seeking for.

The first 10 seconds of a visit is very critical because at that time a user decides that whether he wants to stay on the existing page or leave. Users have seen many poor Web pages hence they act accordingly, so unless and until if a web page is not extraordinary and would not be able to develop an outstanding image on the mind of user then he will not at all stay for a longer time on the website and will switch to the competitor’s website.

Make Your URL Name Easy to Remember

The one of the most important factor is to make aware your customers about you, so you should select such a name for your website which is easy to remember and which makes a meaningful relation with your name.

Make Your Website Mobile Compatible

Nowadays visitors browse the websites with mobile too so it is very important to make your website mobile compatible. This can be done using responsive web design, which is nothing but your website is designed such a way that it fits exactly to the screen of any size giving whole view of the website. Responsive web designs helps in increasing traffic due to increase in percentage of users browsing in mobiles.

Error Handling

There should be proper error handling at the time of coding which keeps the website bug free. While coding for an online application make sure you give proper error messages, so that even if the user while filling the form makes some error it should be clearly shown on the screen where the user has gone wrong. This makes website user friendly and makes website more bug free.

Regular Updates Is Required

According to the changes in the market there arises a need to update the websites, The technology changes day by day and you have to remain updated with the technology and so do your website too.It is essential that you update your website at regular intervals. This will help you to recognize the errors of your portal as well as your users can find something new and fresh after a regular interval.

Search engines like updated websites – Search engines record how often you update your website. The more you update your website, the more it will rank its web pages and the more people will find you on search engines.

Your customers will visit it more often – An important part of updating your website is to keep your customers informed and give them updates. Whether it is news, a sale, an event, a change in policy, etc. all of this is valuable information that your customers want and can use. It will also help attract potential customers and convert them into regular customers.

Speed/Loading Time

Make sure that your website takes a nominal time to be uploaded because viewers hate to visit pages with longer loading time.No one prefers to wait for web pages to load. Therefore, always ensure that your website uses the least codes possible. If your website takes long time to load, chances are that your customers will get bored and leave without reading what you want them to.

Include Contact Information

Never forget to give the contact details of your company so that the viewers can trust you. Try to give some physical address to enhance your reputation.

Providing contact information creates confidence and offers comfort to users since they know that there is a real company behind a business website. This will have a potential impact on the goal conversion, specifically if you are selling products and/or services directly online. Thus the visitor can convert from a visitor to customer easily. Always provide easy contact mechanisms like contact forms, customer service numbers and addresses along with pin codes and phone numbers. Hence potential customers who want to find more about your products or services can reach you at the click of a button or phone call easily.

Social Media Sharing

Include the option of social media sharing on your website so that they viewers can feel it easy to access your website and get connected with their social media profiles through the same.

Social Media in this generation have become so much important and necessary for promoting each and every business, Do include blogs on your website and social media sharing options, people are seeking for the new information and likes to share it on social media platforms, By including social media option on your website gives users the comfort of sharing information without even going away from the website.

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Best Forum Software Sites of 2016 (Free & Premium)

Forums are a great way to build a community website around a theme, create a support tool around a product or service, or add an extension to your existing site so your visitors can interact with each other. Selecting the right forum software is an important first step in making sure your forum will be able successful as possible. You'l want to find a software package that combines stability, security, usability, and flexibility. To help you get started, below is a list of the best forum software.

We all know that forum software are a necessity when venturing out in the wide vast world of internet and keeping in mind the importance of online forum software today we have gathered some best free forum software and paid forum software for you.

phpBB (Free)

If you are looking for the #1 free open source bulletin board software then phpBB is the perfect forum software choice for you. phpBB is one of the best online forum software which comes with a bulletin board format. Using this best forum software, you can stay on top of everything that is happening across your website as well as communicate with a group of people at the same time.

vBulletin (Paid)

Undoubtedly, vBulletin is the most renowned and the world’s leading community software developed by vBulletin Solutions, Inc. and released in 2000. vBulletin is a premium online forum software which is the choice of several top- notch websites.

There are several built- in applications that come with this discussion forum software, such as events management, groups, photo albums, blogs, polls, calendars and so on. vBulletin is available in 3 different versions: Mobile Suite, Forum Suite as well as Publishing Suite.

Read Also: What are the best Website offpage techniques for SEO ?

Some of the most important features of vBulletin forum software are: Unlimited Hierarchy of Forums, Thread and forum subscription, Supports BB Code in posts, Supports HTML in post, Preview post option, Member Profile Pages, Private Messaging, Custom Avatars, Unlimited Moderators and SuperModerators, forum style chooser, Task Scheduler, Moderation queues for user registration and posting, Powerful Templating System, Full CSS layout and design, fast and suitable for robust development, and much more things.

Vanilla Forums

Vanilla gives facilitated and open source group best forum software that powers examination forums. It permits you to make a tweaked group that compensates positive investment, consequently ministers substance and gives individuals a chance to drive balance.

bbPress Forums

This software is particularly for WordPress engineers. In the event that you basically loathe your moderate notice board or your server gets hacked, then this software is unquestionably what you require. It brags web gauges, convenience, simplicity of joining, and speed. Utilizing and administrating it is truly simple, as it is entirely spotless and fast. The best thing about this one is that it is exceptionally adjustable; and it gives due thoughtfulness regarding clients and puts them first.

Some of the eye catching features of bbPress forum software are:

• Simple Setup: Simple Setup Easy to setup. Easy to moderate. Fast, and clean.

• Fully Integrated: One central account. One unified admin area. One click install.

• Single Installation: Simple step-by-step installation walks you through your options.

• Multisite Forums: Divide your site into sections. Allow your users to create content.

• Fast and light: Code are lean so that you get the best experience possible.

• Simple interface: Always keep things simple and make things intuitive.

• Highly extensible: bbPress can’t toast your bagels, but a plugin for it sure could!

• Spam protection: Full Akismet support built in offering you an amazing weapon against spam.

• Customizable templates: Not everybody likes the same pair of pants, so we allow you to dress up your forums however you like.

miniBB Forums

miniBB is a free, standalone, and open source program for building your own Internet forum. The PHP announcement board script offers you a simple and stable message board that incorporates a full customization of the format to the look of your site, and synchronizes your current participation framework.

Simple Machines Forums

Simple machines forums (SMF) is a free however it can give an expert touch to any forum. It permits setting up your online group rapidly. It gives uniquely designed format motor with the goal that you can pick the lay-out of your message board. It has an incredible SSI capacity, and this lets your forum and site interface with each other. SMF is exceedingly adjustable so you can alter in any capacity you need. Utilizing custom topics from a rundown of additionally conceivable with the goal that you can change the look of your site. It additionally has a stunning bolster, so in the event that you experience any issue, you can simply request help.

This forum software is written in PHP and its database is created using MySQL. All features expected from a bulletin board are a part of SMF. In easy words, Simple Machines Forum is elegant elegant, effective and powerful free online forum software which is well known for following attractive features of SMF:

• Advanced permission and user management.
• Supports multiple languages at once.
• Tracking of new and old unread topics, not just from your last visit.
• Better SEO (Search Engine Optimization for search engines.
• Package manager that automatically installs or uninstalls mods.
• Major actions are time and IP locked, preventing ‘hammering’.
• Put a board into maintenance mode, allowing only admins to login.
• Create child boards under other boards.
• Allow certain member groups to access a board, including guests only.
• Configure permissions for each membergroup on the board level.
• Disable member registration completely.
• Require email authentication by sending an authentication link.
• Both cookie and session based authentication.
• Tracking of topics, messages, new members, and hits per day.
• Ability to create announcement boards.
• Ability to choose sendmail or SMTP.
• Ban members based on their username, email address, IP address or hostname
• Support for WAP, WAP2 and I-mode protocols.
• Members can choose which smiley set they wish to use (or none.)
• “Insert Quote” feature on posting screen to quickly quote previous replies.

XenForo

Modern, sleek, very stable. Extremely easy install process, and continued, growing support of the product.M+6

One of the forums I used changed from vBulletin to XenForo a year or so back. Its like night-and-day, a huge improvement in productivity for regular posters and enjoyment by members. Very slickM+7

Just fantastic, fast easy to use and really gone forward with the most important features you want for a forum.M+2

Fast and easy to use

 ZetaBoards (Free)

Do you want to create a free forum with no limit on posts or members? If yes, you must try out ZetaBoards Free Forum Hosting software. ZetaBoards is also one of the top 10 best forum software 2016 which offers free forum hosting which is crucial for the growth of any website on the internet. It doesn’t limit the forum communities by members, posts or bandwidth.

ZetaBoards free forum software is quite user friendly and extraordinarly easy to use. Joinable groups, full customization, support for custom domains, custom profile fields and pinned topics are some of the noticeable features of Zetaboards. If you are are really interested in getting an amzing online forum software that allows maximum level of customizations then download ZetaBoards right now and start using it.

IP. Board (Paid)

For creating an engaging and effortful discussion forum on the web, IP.Board is yet another best forum software that you can use for your website. There are comprehensive tools which are a part of this premium forum software. It will certainly encourage the visitors in coming back to your website. Users can also promote and share the content present on your website using IP.Board.

Powerful solution. Is not free, but you can have the license included free with an Invision Power (the guys who made the program) hosting account starting at $5 a month. The nice this about having them host it is that the handle the installation and upgrades so you don't have to worry about it.

M+15

Customizable an user friendly.

M+8

The best and easiest Bulletin Board to use.

PunBB (Free)

PunBB is yet another best free forum software which is powered by lightweight PHP and released under the GNU General Public License. This online discussion forum software is created with the goal of being lighter, faster, and less graphically intensive. There are very few basic features in PunBB as compared to others in this list. However, it is also comparatively faster and provides smaller outputs which are XHTML complaint pages and are also semantically accurate.

Woltlab Burning Board (Paid)

WoltLab Burning Boards is another best forum software which is fast and reliable in nature. Basically, Woltlab Burning Board is a PHP based forum software, developed since may 2001 by an German company, WoltLab GmbH. Installing and running Woltlab Burning Board software requires a server or webspace with PHP support and a MySQL database (System Requirements: PHP 5.3.2+, MySQL 5.1.17+).

Woltlab Burning Board comes with 3 premium versions: Burning Board, Burning Board Lite and Community Framework, all of which are helpful in expanding your online user base. Some of the most interesting features in Woltlab Burning Board forum software are:

• Quick Notifications
• Visual Customization
• Recent Activities ditection
• Search Engine Optimization
• Facebook Integration
• State-of-the-art Technology
• Multilingualism
• Extensible with Plugins
• First-class Security
• Against Spam
• Import From Other Systems

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What are the best Website offpage techniques for SEO ?

Off-page SEO refers to activities outside the boundaries of the webpage or website. Off page SEO reders to techniques that can be used to improve the position of a website in the search engine results page (SERPs) but depending on another web page or website or blog.

Techniques for SEO :

Social Media Engagement

A major Off-page SEO technique is social media engagement. If you want to make your business, website or blog popular, engage with people on multiple social media platforms. Social media presence will help grow your business and also help you get more back links.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are one of the best platforms to promote your website. When you bookmark your webpage or blog post on popular social bookmarking websites, you gain high traffic to your webpage or blog.

Forum Submission

Participate in search forums which are related to your website and business and make a connection with that community. Reply to threads, answer people’s questions and give your suggestions and advice. Make use of “Do-Follow” forums.

Blog Directory Submission

Directory Submission is constantly working to build quality back links. Choose an effective directory and select a proper category. It takes quite some time to deliver good results, but these results stand out over a longer time period.

Article Submission

Submit your articles in a high PR article submission directory. You can also give links to your website. Make sure your content is unique and of high quality. Low quality content and content that has more keyword stuffing might get rejected. Choose the correct category and give a good title to your content.

Question and Answer

One of the best ways you can get high traffic is from question and answer websites. Join high PR question and answer sites and search for questions related to your business, blog or website and give clear answers to these questions. Give a link to your website which will help in bringing you more visibility.

Video Submission

If you want to make your videos popular, head to popular video submission sites. Give a proper title, description, tags and reference links. It is one of the more popular ways to get quality back links because all video submission websites have high PR.

Image Submission

Share your photos on popular image submission websites. Before submitting your images please optimize them with the correct URL and title tag. Before submitting your images, check if they have a proper title, description and tags.

Infographics Submission

Make creative infographics. These days, infographics are getting popular on the internet. Submit your infographics on infographics submission websites and give reference links to your webpage or blog. The image sizes differ with different websites.

Document Sharing

Create attractive documents relating to your business or blog. The documents should have unique content and should be in either pdf or ppt formats. Submit these documents in the document sharing websites.

Search Engine Submission

Search engines will eventually find your site online, but that can take a while. To speed everything up, you should submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google,Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Website Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead! we believe that it isn’t as you are increasing the likelyhood of people seeing your website. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission.

Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is bigger than ever these days! Sometimes

known as “Online Reputation Management”, getting involved with social

media sites is the fundamental step with which you begin to advertise, market

and build your online reputation within your niche.

Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to promote your website online! By writing a blog for yourwebsite, you give a reason for visitors to keep returning to your site and keep

up to date with your latest posts. It also helps search engines to crawl your site more frequently, as theyhave to update your latest blog post entries, which ultimately helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Blog Marketing

Post comments on other blogs within the same niche as yours, which allow you to add a link in the comments section. These links can then be crawled by search engines, helping to point them towards your site.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is another great way of promoting your website. Submit your latest blog posts and pages to the most popular bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit,etc. Search engines really like these types of sites because the content on these sites is updated very frequently.

Link Baiting

Link baiting is another popular way of promoting your site. If you produce a really popular unique post for your site, then other people may want to link to it. Perhaps you have copied/published another website’s content on your site, don’t forget to place their website link as a reference.

Photo Sharing

If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share then on many of the major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, etc.

Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, etc. allowing people to find your content in other ways.

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