We've provided some guidelines about how to evaluate the companies which offer blogging solutions. Obviously, we at Six Apart are a blogging solutions vendor, so we're biased. But we think you'll find the overall framework useful and we're eager to talk both about the areas where we excel as well as the areas where we're striving to improve. More companies have chosen Six Apart's platforms to power their business blogs than any other provider. Based on our experience in helping businesses get started with Movable Type and TypePad, we think you'll come to the same decision once you've considered all of these criteria.

Vendor support

The single most important thing to consider about your vendor is the relationship you'll have with this key technology provider. In many organizations, starting a blog is seen as something of a radical step, and even those who are enthusiastic about the idea can be intimidated by the potential complexity or pitfalls. The key considerations to keep in mind can be described succinctly:

• Professional technical support
• Understanding of your needs
• Focus on business solutions
• Extensive expertise and background in blogging

With that in mind, you'll want to choose a vendor and a technology platform that offers professional support. Support includes (of course) technical support for the software solution itself, but there are many other important considerations. Your first concern should be your technology provider's familiarity with your particular needs. This can be juddged by looking at current blog deployments in your industry as well as the responsiveness of your own interactions with the vendor.

You'll also want to analyze a blogging vendor's focus; As blogging grows in popularity, a lot of companies will enter the market despite not having experience in business blogging. And make sure the technology you're considering is appropriate for business use, as opposed to being designed for technology enthusiasts, hackers, or geeks. You want to make you're your blogging platform is a tool, not a "toolkit" that you have to finish assembling yourself.

There's also a tendency to "bolt on" blogging functionality to existing complicated content management systems. One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it's easy enough that people want to participate - attaching a blogging function to a system that's too complex to use negates the benefits of simple information sharing. Simply having the word "blog" in a product description doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.

Our take: At Six Apart, blogging is what we do, in all its forms, for every audience that can benefit from blogging. We make sure our tools integrate well with the other technology you have, because our focus is on making our platforms the most manageable and reliable blogging tools available.

Community and third-party support

Another way to judge the health and viability of a platform provider is to look at the community and partnerships that extend beyond the vendor itself. Industry alliances, support for technology standards, a robust network of third-party systems integrators and consultants - the presence of each of these elements is a key indicator that you can rely on a particular vendor.

Some of the third-party offerings that show the robustness of a blogging solution are the availability of independent books and guides, the number of professional consultants that make a living using the platforms, and the number of different markets or geographical regions in which the vendor has a presence.

Our take: Six Apart is a key platform provider for most of the largest business blogs in the world, and has a dedicated community called the Six Apart Professional Network. The Professional Network consists of thousands of developers, designers, consultants, systems integrators, and IT professionals around the world, all of whom build their careers on Six Apart's blogging platforms. In addition, dozens of books have sprung up in languages around the world, offering everything from low-level technical information to

Extensibility, customizability and openness

Another key consideration for evaluating blogging platforms is the extensibility of the platform. Because blogs are a tool of expression and communication, it's key that information can easily be entered into the system from your other applications and then presented in whatever format you prefer.

Some of the key blogging interoperability standards to look for:

• Atom (IETF RFC 4287): content syndication format and publishing API
• RSS: content syndication format
• TrackBack: protocol for automatic creation of links between sites
• XHTML and CSS: Web standards for defining page structure and presentation

Most importantly, you want to make sure the critical data you enter into your system isn't locked into the application. Support for open formats and multiple platforms ensures that you can integrate or migrate your data as needed in the future.

Our take: By default, all Six Apart platforms natively support all of the formats and protocols listed above. In addition, we've helped create the IETF Atom and TrackBack specifications, leading the move towards open standards in the blogging industry.

We also make our de facto standards as open as possible, such as our templating and styles system. The structure, layout, and tag elements of the templating system shared by Movable Type and TypePad are fully documented and have been implemented in platforms such as Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver, as well as numerous third-party tools.

In addition, we support full access to all application programming interfaces (APIs) for our platforms without requiring any kind of licensing agreement or additional payments. All Six Apart platforms support full import and export of your data at any time, whether for backup purposes or for integration with your other applications.

Customer references

The one simple requirement for all of the software choices you make is that you should be able to talk to existing users and find out about their experiences. Key items to look for include references within your specific industry, deployments that have been in place for an extended period of time, and the amount of investment that companies have made in their deployments.

In short, it's not merely that a platform has customers using it - it's that the blogging platform is an essential part of a company's business.

Our take: At Six Apart, we're proud to say that most of our new customers come from referrals our current customers. Many of our largest customers are so pleased with their experience with Six Apart platforms that they elect to promote a "Powered by Movable Type" or "Powered by TypePad" link on their site. And we've got deployments in key industries which have been in continuous successful operation for years - that's a long time in the blogging space.

What's more, many of our largest deployments have built entire workflows and custom applications on top of our platforms. That kind of investment reflects the trust and investment that our customers place in Six Apart.

Industry reputation

In addition to the word of existing customers, it pays to listen to the overall sentiment about a vendor's products, management, business practices, and financial stability. Both press reports and word-of-mouth are useful tools in helping to judge a company, along with your own interactions in communicating with the company.

It also makes sense to consider a vendor's reputation for innovation, and their consistency of focus over time. The bottom line is that you want a vendor who is committed to your success with blogs.

Our take: At Six Apart, we're the largest independent blogging company in the world, with millions of users on our platforms. We've earned endorsements from many of the most experienced and respected bloggers and businesses in the world, and have been highlighted by the press as leaders in the technology industry as a whole. We're serious about business blogs, having been among the first providers of professional-class platforms, and providing resources like our Business Blogging Guide as evidence of our hard-earned experience.