Having a place to showcase your skills is very important when trying to build your business and your client base. That’s one of the reasons why so many people, including developers, decide to start a blog. Blogs are a great way to show off some of your skills and an amazing way for clients to get to know you. Picking the right platform to start your blog on isn’t the easiest decision though. Keep reading to find some of the best blogging platforms for developers.
Top 6 Blogging Platforms for Developers
- Hugo – Best for Getting Started Quickly
- Boltcms – Best for Creating Content
- Nikola – Best for Beginners
- Brunch – Best for Busy Users
- Dev.To – Best for Building a Community
- Gifthub – Best for a Team
1. Hugo – Best for Getting Started Quickly
Pricing: Free
If you are wanting to get your blog up and running as quickly as possible, then Hugo is the best platform for you. They have hundreds of themes to pick from and have shortcuts to make customizing your blog that much easier and faster. You can start creating the content for your site and figuring out the layout you want within minutes. Hugo also has pre-made templates to make your website start working in seconds. It’s a free platform that will download onto your device quickly and make starting your blog a faster process than you ever thought possible.
Key Features:
- Hundreds of themes
- Templates
- Shortcodes
Reasons to Buy:
- Free
- Makes starting a blog a very fast process
Reasons to Avoid:
- You can’t choose every little detail since it’s all pre-built
2. Boltcms – Best for Creating Content
Pricing: Free
Boltcms makes creating content for your blog easy. They organize content in what they call ContentTypes, which helps organize your entire website. Having your content organized this way makes it easy to find and edit all of your posts before they are available for others to see. Bolt is very similar to Symfony application in its structure and really in just how it runs. This means that if you are familiar with this application then you will learn how to use Bolt quickly. If not, it may take some time to learn how Boltcms works, but it will be worth it in the end.
Key Features:
- ContentTypes
- Symfony application
Reasons to Buy:
- It makes creating and organizing content easy
- Easy to learn
Reasons to Avoid:
- It is geared towards creating content regularly
3. Nikola – Best for Beginners
Pricing: Free
Finding a way to showcase your skills and start gaining a client base when first starting out is not easy. However, Nikola makes starting a blogging platform for developers easy. They have an easy-to-understand and easy figure-out user interface that will make getting your blog up and running a fast process. Every tool they offer you is clearly labeled so you know exactly what they will do when you choose to use them. Nikola even has automatic rebuilds which means that it will automatically detect changes that you make and apply them directly to your site. They even have lots of built-ins, for example, they have an image gallery where you can find free pictures to put up on your website.
Key Features:
- Easy to understand user interface
- Automatic rebuilds
- Built-in free tools
Reasons to Buy:
- It is easy to figure out how to use it
- All of the tools are labeled to make them easy to find
Reasons to Avoid:
- You have to make your own plugin if they don’t have exactly what you are looking for
4. Brunch – Best for Busy Users
Pricing: Free
If you are somebody who has a busy schedule and may not have a ton of time to work on your blog, then Brunch is the best platform for you. Brunch has simplified its configs to make it less messy automatically which makes it easy to see what you are doing. This also makes finding any mistakes easier and faster. Brunch provides starting points for every application with Skeletons. Skeleton makes creating a new application take only a few minutes. They automatically rebuild the application with every change that you make to the file so you don’t have to worry about it. This will free up more of your time to be able to work on all of the other things that you have to do during the day.
Key Features:
- Skeleton
- Simplified configurations
- Automatically rebuild applications
Reasons to Buy:
- You will have more time to work on other things
- It is easy to find and edit every file
Reasons to Avoid:
- It may take some time to get used to the features and layout
5. Dev.To – Best for Building a Community
Pricing: Free
Having a community that is supporting and rooting for you every step of the way can feel amazing. With Dev.To, this can become a reality very quickly and easily. When you make a post, other users can like it and comment on it and follow you to see more of your content. Anyone interested in your niche can find you quickly, even possible clients. When posts get a lot of attention or are about a very unique topic, they may get featured on the home-page where even more people will see it. If you want to still have a more official blog, Dev.To allows you to cross-post. Your posts will even show up in a Google search. A lot of the articles on the site are how-to and tutorial-based articles, however, articles of every type are posted and still get popular.
Key Features:
- Cross-post to other platforms
- Other users can like and comments
Reasons to Buy:
- You can build a community and interact with your community
- The posts will show up on Google
- You can also interact with other people’s posts
Reasons to Avoid:
- There are mainly how-to articles and tutorials
- You do not have a custom domain/personal website
6. Gifthub – Best for a Team
Pricing: Free
Gifthub is the best blogging platform for developers if you are starting a blog with another person or with a few other people. This platform lets you contribute to other peoples projects and lets others contribute to your projects. They let you see the changes that have been made to it by other people as well. Gifthub also makes it so that you can choose who is allowed to edit your projects so that people you don’t know are not allowed to touch them. You can see all of the code that a contributor has added and make sure that it runs correctly. Toto even allows you to have a group discussion with every member of your team about the project that you are working on.
Key Features:
- Team discussions
- Collaborative coding
- Review new code
Reasons to Buy:
- Makes it easy to work with another person or a group of people
- You can learn how to use the platform quickly
Reasons to Avoid:
- A lot of automatic features are running in the background
References and Links:
- https://www.codementor.io/@lovellifuad/15-clean-and-simple-open-source-blogging-platforms-for-your-developer-blog-qdrlfwhl6
- https://gohugo.io/
- https://boltcms.io/
- https://getnikola.com/
- https://brunch.io/
- https://techbum.io/best-blogging-platforms-for-software-developers/
- https://dev.to/
- https://github.com/