Clothes Free Blogging Platforms

Hello lovies. I’m happy to say that I am doing better than I was a couple months ago. I didn’t realize it but I think I was going thought a bought of depression, and I slowly drifted into that cyclical world of ups and downs. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the one year anniversary of the start of my life falling apart. I am so thankful for all of you who reached out to me, shared your concerns, and wished me well. Those always brought a smile to my face. Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about a topic to write about, but nothing has really jumped out at me. I don’t think it has been writers block…maybe it has been because I have like five articles started, but nothing has really motivated me much. Either the topics lost their appeal and seem unimportant, or I just didn’t want to fool with it because I saw someone else touch on it. Whatever the reason I will get to them.

A couple weeks ago I had a reader post a comment/feedback telling me they wanted to start blogging, and had questions on what the best platform would be. I proceeded to give a couple lines of advice based on my experience, and I started to recommend WordPress, but through the week I started thinking on it a little more and wondered if WordPress really is the best platform to blog on. This reader wanted to start out with a blogging platform that was free to use before they fully committed to spending the money on a domain name and hosting. I think this is a great idea and I would encourage anyone to try this first before jumping in. Blogging can be very time consuming, and if you get too overwhelmed too quickly, then you will find yourself not wanting to continue it for the long term. I am going to focus on a few things that I feel are important for a clothes free blogger to look for when selecting a platform. I just finished my first cup of coffee and I’m ready to write a bit.

Gather Our Requirements

I guess it goes without saying that our first requirement is your blogging platform should either allow nudity, or be open enough to allow you to talk about nudism and your nudist adventures. The last thing we want is to be censored for speaking out as advocates for free and open nudity. There have been many real, genuine nudists who have either been censored, warned, or banned from different social platforms. It’s disgusting to say the least, but that is the world we live in, and tech companies are becoming ever more powerful in their ability to control the internet.

The next requirement is arguably ease of use. If you are like most people, then you don’t want to feel like you need a Ph.D in computer science and engineering to speak your mind. We want something that can be setup in just a few clicks and something that requires as little brain power as possible. I’m a firm believer in keeping it simple and having something walk you through setup like TurboTax does for the annual theft of your money. Just let me pick my site title and press the magic button for it to just appear.

Give me the freebies. Let me try out my new found passion with a free tier first. No one is going to go from zero to hero in a matter of a day, week, or maybe even months. It takes time to build an audience, and there’s no sense in spending a boat load of money for something that may not be as enjoyable as you thought. Writing is an art and it takes work. If you find out you don’t have the time or energy to commit to it, then you don’t want to have spent hundreds of dollars on something that is abandoned. Let’s try it out first.

I could probably go on all day listing things to look for, but I will stop here and list availability and support as the last thing. It’s best to use a platform that is widely available on the internet and either has the support of a large corporation or a large community. You don’t want to pour your heart and soul into a project only to have it taken away after six months because the two guys working on it in their basement just gave up. Let’s go with something that will carry us for while.

WordPress

Well, I’m sure you expected this to be on the list since this is what myself and many other nudist bloggers use. If fact, according to WordPress, 42% of the web is built on WordPress. Granted, not all of these are bloggers, but the great thing about WordPress is it is open source, which allows developers to take the core code of the application and customize it anyway they want. You can build your own themes, plugins, full website, store, non-profit, and many other uses for personal or business use. Let’s get into our focal points about the application.

Nudity

Reading through the WordPress Terms of Service (so boring), WordPress says they are “…designed to give you control and ownership over your websites. We encourage you to express yourself freely,…”. What does this really mean though? Short answer is it means you won’t do anything illegal with their service. A few examples are spam, hacking, disclosing personal information of others, distribute malware, or any other bad thing. However, this is pretty much only on when hosted on their servers, so if you host it yourself there isn’t much they can or will do. They even say “We’re not responsible for any use or effects of Content or third-party websites.” WordPress goes on to say they cannot and will not review any site which uses their software on a third party platform. So, if you host it yourself, then you can do what ever within the confines of the law. Still, even with a site hosted on WordPress servers, their User Guidelines say “Nudity, in and of itself, is fine“, but your site may be marked as mature. Currently, WordPress believes in people’s ability to express themselves, so as long as you are only posting nudism related content and no pornography, then you are in the clear.

Ease of Use

I think most would agree that WordPress is one of the easiest platforms to use. Once you create an account, then it just takes a few clicks to get started. You select a site name, pick and template, font’s desired, and you’re off to the races. The only drawback to going the free route is WordPress tries to upsell you every step of the way. They want to sell you a domain, hosting package, and try to lure you in with stuff that you don’t really need and stuff that is way too overpriced. If you want to open the doors of all the features, then you can get a third party hosting provider and do it much cheaper. If you the hosted route, then most hosting providers can give you a lot more for less.

Cost

WordPress does come with a free tier to get you started, and this allow you to try out the platform, make blog posts, and change a few settings. They deliberately limit you on what you can do because they want to sell you their business and services. I have found out that you don’t need to spend a bunch of money trying to upgrade tiers for extras. Sure, it’s easier to do it through WordPress, but they aren’t your only option. To get you started and designing a really nice site, then the free tier is all you need. Keep in mind though you will not have your own domain. You will use a subdomain from WordPress, meaning your site will be mynakedsite.wordpress.com or something similar. Also, WordPress will post ads on your site as a way to make money.

Availability and Support

I mentioned in my introduction that WordPress makes up 42% of all internet websites, and is by far the most popular website and blogging platform there is. Not only is it supported and sponsored by WordPress, but because WordPress made their platform open source, there are thousands of developers actively working on theme templates, plugins, hosting platforms, and many other applications to make WordPress better. Additionally, if you decide to open a naturist store, then WordPress can handle that task as well.

Blogger

Blogger is an easy to use platform which was purchased by Google in 2008 ( I think) when it was called Blogspot. I used Blogger many years ago because it was tied into Google and it just made things easier. I didn’t really do much with because I didn’t have the time or dedication that is needed to start something successful. The one good thing about Blogger is it is already tied into Google and it’s very easy to setup and you can host ads using Google’s Adsense platform. The only drawback is they don’t like nudity and won’t display ads on an adult/mature site. Whatever Google.

Nudity

Similar to WordPress, Blogger claims to want to allow people to express themselves openly and without repercussion or censorship, and it specifically says in their terms of service they allow nudity and sexual content on their platform. Granted, any nudity posted must be legal content and content that you have permission to post. If they find out you posted nude pics of your ex-girlfriend or from that hidden shower cam, then Google will take action to have that removed, if prompted or requested. WordPress basically says whatever, not our problem.

Cost

Blogger is a free platform to use and has many features available right out of the box. You have a number of themes to choose from and it’s very easy to customize many things without having to be up-sold or hounded by Google. While there may not be as many themes to choose from, you are allowed to post ads on there for revenue provided you don’t post any nudity. Also, if you want to own your own domain, then you can purchase that through Google and they will host it on their servers.

Ease of Use

I touched on this a little bit before, but I will add a few more lines about it. While you don’t appear to have near as many themes or addons for the Blogger platform, it does appear there are more ways to customize the appearance of your blog. Blogger provides you with a slider bar that allows you to set the width of your blog, more options for using different sections (side bars, footers, etc), and your color and font changes are much more robust. Additionally, setting up a blog is very easy to do and you get a similar domain to WordPress, mynakedsite.blogspot.com. Overall, it’s still not as robust as WordPress, but still a very viable option. I’ve seen many nudist oriented blogs on blogger.

Availability and Support

Blogger has the backing and support of one of the most powerful companies on the planet, so you can feel at east that your blog content won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Blogger is not open source and is hosted on Google servers, so Google has all the control and can determine what is allowed and what isn’t. This is good to a point in that it helps protect against illegal and disgusting content, but it still raises a red flag where at any given time they can decide they won’t allow nudity on their sites and there isn’t much you can do about it. There is an option to export your blog content, but I don’t really know how easily it is to port to another application, especially if you have pictures and other media embedded.

Medium

Medium is a behemoth collection of independent bloggers who write specifically for their platform. Medium writers own their content and can pretty much write about anything that is compliant with their rules and terms of service. Although Medium is not as large as WordPress in terms of bloggers, data shows they are beginning to narrow the gap. One neat thing I saw about Medium is you can earn money on your blog by the amount of people reading your content. I have no idea how much that is, but I wouldn’t expect it to be a lot unless you have a lot of followers and subscribing members.

Nudity

When it comes to Medium they have a bit more restrictions on what content can be posted, but they are rather vague in their prohibitions. In the Medium Rules it prohibits the promotion of pornographic content, but does allow erotic writing and “non-graphic erotic images “. Not sure what that means just yet, but if they classify non-graphic nude images as erotic, then you might be in the clear to post that. I’m not sure what others have posted on there, so it’s hard to say. I have poked around at some of the “erotic” writings just to see what they have, and most of them either don’t show nudity, or the nudity is just from the back. Clearly butt cheeks must be okay…maybe. I will have to dive into it a little more when I have time, but for now we’re going to go with a definite maybe??

Cost

Medium is free for content creators and readers, but they have membership option as well to remove ads and support the writers themselves. Medium has a way to detect how many people are reading an article and for how long. I’m sure they can use your scrolling patterns to determine if you’re reading like a typical human would read. If you want to add your own custom domain, then you will need to upgrade to the premium version. The cost of that is about $50 per year plus the cost of your domain name. I don’t know how all of that works, but I’m sure it’s an easy process.

Ease of Use

Similar to the previous platforms mentioned, Medium is fairly easy to get started and you are walked through the entire process start to finish. While I did not see a way to have a custom theme for your webpage, Medium does allow you to customize your profile and feed with colors, fonts, pictures, and many other options. If you’re looking for something simplistic and sleek, and without confusing options to get started, then Medium will be a very easy choice to get you going. Maybe once you learn and understand more about the process and what you want, then you can more to something more customizable, if desired.

Availability and Support

Medium is one of the most visited websites on the internet with an almost unlimited amount of content to read. Some writers make a living by just writing on Medium alone. I read a blog post about how much money writers make, and it seems the average can be between $600-$1000 a month writing. Not bad if you’re a part-time writer. Some numbers show some have made over $45,000 for a single post!! Insane. The point I am getting at is it is a very popular platform, and some are making their living on here, so I don’t anticipate the site leaving anytime soon. I can’t comment on the support quality, but given how profitable Medium is, I don’t see any lack of support for writers.

Final Thoughts

There are so many blog and website providers out there that is nearly impossible to cover them all in a single post. So many of them are very similar with what they do, how they feel, and the ease of use. Some of these are free, like the ones above, but some will cost you some money. If you want full customization and freedom to do what you want, then you may be better off either developing yourself, or having someone do it for you. Then again, that could be really expensive. If you are just getting started writing, then I would suggest you try something for free to start. There is a lot of work involved with just finding and writing content, and if you do too much all at once it could burn you out. We need more naked writers, especially female ones, so take baby steps to get started. I look forward to reading what you have. I have a few things I am working on right now, but I may try to take a deeper dive into this to create an easy reference chart or something to help you out.

Live free. Live naked.