The explosion of blogging and of bloggers is showing no sign of slowing down, with dozens of blogs begun every moment of every day.

Indeed, it's becoming almost expected for any digitally-oriented person to have a blog, but one important trend that's been gaining steam for a few years now is the use of blogging tactics and tools by government and companies to help control their messaging to constituents and customers by providing a daily glance behind-the-scenes at these major organizations

Google, for example, has several official blogs, and previews coming changes on its blog prior to launch as a means of gauging community interest and reaction.

Whether you're looking to launch a blog for personal or business reasons, Athena Internet can give you the platform you're looking for, with all the support you need to build a successful presence.

There are two primary "Blog" Content Management Systems we recommend: WordPress and MovableType.

WordPress

WordPress is, by sheer numbers, the most widely installed content management system in existence. What that number obscures is the specific number of folks who use it to host their blogs, and the specific number of corporations that use it for their own marketing communications, or in some cases, their entire corporate website.

WordPress' speed and flexibility is what allows it to serve these diverse needs with grace and ease; it's dead-simple approach to administration puts it well within the capabilities of even the most technophobic people.

We recommend WordPress for sites that will be mostly content-driven, but may need one or two additional features such as contact forms or multimedia functionality. For aspiring podcasters, the free PodPress plug-in is particularly compelling! Click here to learn more about our WordPress hosting services!

We recommend WordPress for sites that require an easily-extensible content-driven site.

MovableType

Movable Type is basically the software package that really started the explosion of blogging several years back, and has grown and evolved in its own right, spawning its own unique ecosphere and userbase while doing so. Movable Type comes in two flavors; a commercial edition and an open-source version.

Movable Type uses Perl as a CGI plugin, thus creating a greater level of security than PHP-based solutions. Also, because MovableType works by rendering HTML pages, rather than dynamically generating every single page at the time of the request, it is a speed-demon that can scale to much greater traffic levels with less hardware than its competition.

We recommend Movable Type for corporate and governmental blogs that will remain almost-totally content-oriented, and not grow into additional features or functions.