5 South African Blogging Platforms

Published by Charl Norman on Feb 18th, 2008, 10 Comments

Blogging in SA has really taken off with thousands of South Africans looking to their blogs to express themselves. Testament to this is the success of Amatomu.com which is responsible to sorting the SA blogosphere and Afrigator.com which indexed the thousands of blog post in a social media aggregator and directory.

Today I’m going to give you more info about South African blogging platforms, all of them being free to register. So I’m going to get this going:

iBlog.co.za

It’s supposed to be the largest blogging site in Africa because iBlog recently announced they’ve reached 8,000 bloggers. The platform is running WordPress and allows the user to customize it. Signing up is free and when you choose your username keep in mind that your blog will be something like this “http://username.iblog.co.za”. One thing I like about iBlog is the fact that the front page is more like a community and promotes the best articles.

Amagama

Amagama logo If you want to start your own blog as soon as possible, Amagama says you can do it in less than 3 minutes. I agree. Working on WordPress MU (multi user) Edition, Amagama is part of Mail & Guardian the guys that run the popular Amatomu.

Blogs.24.com

Another blogging platform from South Africa is blogs.24.com. They’re not using WordPress or Blogger, but a custom blogging platform. Signing up for a blog on 24.com is very easy and fast. They also have a community-like front page with most commented, most read and newly updated.

Blog247.co.za

For every South African that needs a blog to express themselves, Blog247.co.za guys are ready to offer one. You create your account, give it a name and then you’re ready to roll. They’re using WordPress MU edition.

MyDigitalLife

If you would like to blog on MyDigitalLife.co.za then you should become a “citizen”. It’s not hard and in a few minutes you would be ready to blog. From what I’ve seen it’s not that easy like using WordPress but believe me you won’t have a problem publishing your articles. These guys are covering more like tech/gadgets.

Have anything to add? Do it in comments below!

Stii

Interesting! One question though. You say: “They’re not using WordPress or Blogger, but a custom blogging platform.” Is blogger not Google’s? Did I miss something, or can one download the software somewhere? Would be keen to check out the blogger source!
http://www.noboxmedia.com Robin Pietersen

MyADSL also have an ok blog facility. It seems to be an extension of the forum sw. All the standard sidebar facilities are available. I would say it is on par with MyDigitalLife, just not marketed as well. Another one you could add is ZOOPY’s new blogging engine. They launched it in December.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/blog.php
http://www.zoopy.com/blog
http://www.zoopedup.com Charl Norman

Thanks Robin

I blog on Myadsl and ThoughtLeader so I know about those but they’re not open to the public. Neither is MyDigitalLife I hear you say but its quite easy to be accepted.. Not anyone can apply for Myadsl or TL

Zoopy is the same as my sites Zoopedup.com or Blueworld.co.za, both have blogging platforms as well

I wanted this post to be solely blogging providers and not video, photo sharing as well
http://www.noboxmedia.com Robin Pietersen

Cool dude. Must say, personally I wouldn’t classify MDL as a blogging platform. It has good content, but if you look closer most of the content is produced by ITWeb sub-brands or pulled from Reuters. I rate it is a Joomla based, gadget/tech news site with paid for blog add-on. They do a good job at pushing the whole citizen vibe but in the end it is a commercial news site and an avenue to distribute content for ITweb (Unwired, itweb.co.za, iWeek etc)…
http://www.blacklooks.org sokari ekine

Included you in this weeks African blog roundup on Pambabzuka News to be published on Friday

Best
http://www.noboxmedia.com Robin

Came across a ‘local blog platform’ I have not heard of before, pretty new, lunched last year November. Not really my thing to post, thought you might find it interesting – http://blat.co.za
http://www.zoopedup.com Charl Norman

I saw blat, looks like its doing well

The header needs work tho?

I agree with your MDL comments, theres few quality blogging platforms in SA.. anyone can use blogspot or wordpress.com
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Paul

You may not have heard about http://free-blog.co.za/ as it is new, but it also runs off wordpress MU as many of them do. Expect a press release soon. Nice blog and content btw.

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