Do you want to blog but you don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re already a blogger and you’d like to check out other platforms and their offerings? Blogging is common place these days but new people are discovering and jumping into platforms like WordPress everyday.

We’ve gathered a list of the best blogging platforms around, along with some resources for things like themes, plugins and tutorials. Take a look at the best of the best and share your favorite resources or platform of choice.

Tumblr is a free social blogging platform that’s designed to take most of the effort out of actually blogging. Initially, blogging meant writing. On Tumblr, it means sharing something cool that you found online and occasionally attaching a caption. That doesn’t mean Tumblr can’t handle original content as well, but it’s not designed for anyone who is looking to create a long-form blog. If you simply want to share neat stuff and have a social network built-in to your blog so you can easily interact with other users, Tumblr is the way to go.

Tumblr

Asaph is a microblog platform like Tumblr that you host yourself. It’s very, very simple. You add content via a bookmarklet. You can create your own themes or use the few that are included. If you like the idea of Tumblr but want an open-source option so you have full control, Asaph is what you’re looking for.

If Tumblr is a bit too simple for you, but you still want simple, Posterous Spaces is a great choice. It simply lets you post what you want and interprets the content you provide it. You can post from the Posterous site, but you can also just email everything you want to put on your blog. It’ll turn photos into galleries and convert video into a player as well. It’s a great option if you want simplicity, don’t need a lot of control, but need the versatility to post short- and long-form content alike.

Squarespace is a paid blogging platform that offers easily customizable themes, as well as the option for people well-versed in CSS to create their own. Squarespace is more versatile than your average blogging platform, however, as it’s completely capable of creating web sites as well. The entire interface is web-based, and it’s pretty easy to learn. Basically, Squarespace was designed to create really nice web sites very quickly and easily without the need for the end user to have to figure out where to host their software, how to install it, and how to best set it up.

Squarespace

WordPress is pretty well-known as the most popular blogging software around. It has that reputation because it is really great. It’s easy to get your blog started if you choose a hosting service, and even if you host WordPress yourself there are hosts that offer one-click installations of the software. WordPress offers over one-thousand free themes, and there are many great themes you can buy. It’s also easy to create your own theme, even if you don’t know much about writing code. If you do know how to code, however, you can add custom functions to your themes, create plug-ins, and use WordPress to do virtually anything you want.

Habari is an excellent, lesser-known blogging platform written in PHP. It’ll require manual installation and a lot of work on your part if you want a completely custom blog—and you will, because the existing theme options could be a bit better. Although Habari is not as popular as WordPress, it still has plenty of plug-ins and an amazing amount of functionality built-in. It offers one of the best admin sections/post editors you’ll ever use and includes full keyboard control. It’s the most versatile and customizable solutions of anything on this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Habari isn’t difficult to use, but to get the most out of it you’ll want some programming experience. If you want full control over your blog with the help of a great content management system, Habari is the way to go.