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View Full Version : Can you please provide a comparison between Wordpress and Blogger



elsoft
05-01-2009, 07:54 AM
Hi friends.i am currently using blogger for my blog.i was reading a lot about wordpress.It would be great if some one who is experienced with both of these provide a comparison between these two sites.

Thank you.:)

rezzy
05-01-2009, 08:01 AM
Are you talking about the Wordpress hosting Wordpress vs Blogger hosted?

Is blogger even a downloadable blog platform?

elsoft
05-01-2009, 08:09 AM
Hi Rezzy.Thanks for the response.Iam not much aware of wordpress.Blogger is not a downloadable blog platform.Actually what I was looking for is a comparision from the bloggers perspective.I guess wordpress is much more flexible and great from the developer's perspective than blogger.But what about from blogger's point of view which is better and how?

rezzy
05-01-2009, 08:16 AM
To be honest, I dont have much experience with blogger. When I jumped into Wordpress, I went for self-hosted. Where I have total control over everything.

I am not even sure how different those are managed from mine. I would like to believe, blogger is not as friendly or because its not a popular format, you cant customize it with as many templates. This is pure speculation, because I havent done any research on Blogger.

And having it stuck on Bloggers server, makes it a hassle if you decide to migrate to another platform.... I know there are tools to convert the database over, but still its more complicated then just exporting a xml file.

elsoft
05-01-2009, 08:20 AM
Very nice.I was just wondering how does wordpress earn for their efforts,since its basically open source and I dont see many ads(rather no ads) anywhere on their site.

Patrysha
05-01-2009, 10:13 AM
I did a ghostwriting project on blogger. And I do have a few dead blogger blogs.

For a straight blog, I really don't think it matters much which is chosen. It's when you want to customize and add to it that WordPress leads the way.

cbscreative
05-01-2009, 11:37 AM
I learned of a major frustration some time ago with Blogger because their system is so inflexible. Many Bloggers were using Adobe Contribute to manage their blogs, and one day it just stopped working. Google made some kind of change that caused the problem, and to my knowledge, there was no fix. Although this only impacted Contribute users, the impact on them was major.

Personally, I strongly advise against Blogger for several reasons. Rather than go into a rant, WordPress is very flexible and makes Blogger unnecessary. With Blogger, you will always be at Google's mercy and there is nothing you can do to change that.

With free hosting, it's important to realize they own your content. For some bloggers, they don't care about that. I believe $7 a month is well worth it to buy your own hosting and WordPress is easy to use on almost any hosting platform.

vangogh
05-01-2009, 12:18 PM
For most Blogger and WordPress.com are free. WordPress.com does charge money for extra features. However if you're going to use WordPress I'd recommend downloading it from WordPress.org and installing it in your own hosting account. That's the much more flexible solution.

From the perspective of the person blogging, both are pretty easy to use. For the basics they might be equal. Some things will be easier on one and some things on the other. The main advantage to WordPress is you'll be able to do so much more with it if you host it yourself.

It's ultimately more flexible and extensible. You'll be able to do more with WordPress, have more choices when it comes to themes, and be able to add more functionality through plugins.

KristineS
05-01-2009, 12:59 PM
I've used both. I started a blog on Blogger originally for an organization that I run and recently moved it to Wordpress. For what it's worth, here's my opinion.

Blogger is plug and play. It's easy to set up and run and if you're just starting out or don't know much about how to set up a site, it's a good choice. Blogger isn't as easy to customize, and it doesn't do some relatively basic things (categories for instance). You also are a bit limited on the look of your blog. You'll find a lot of Blogger blogs out there that look very much the same, so it's a bit hard to differentiate yourself. Blogger also can be subject to outages or issues. I had times where I couldn't save a post for instance.

The Wordpress I use, which I use for three blogs that I write, is self hosted, not from Wordpress.com. I also have the marvelous Vangogh (http://www.vanseodesign.com/) to help me when I blow up the sites, which happens on occasion, so my experience may be atypical. The main thing I like is the customization that is possible. You can find a great many themes, paid and free, which you can use to create a unique look for your blog. If you know basic HTML you can make most of the changes you would need or want to make quite easily. There are also a great many plug ins that will let you do a wide variety of things with your blog. Most of those are fairly easy to install as well. I can do it, so it can't be that hard.

Now that I no longer use Blogger, I most likely wouldn't go back to it. Don't get me wrong, Blogger is a good, basic program and it may be ideal for those who just want to have a casual blog or a way to keep in touch with family and friends. If you're hoping to do more than that with your blog, I'd recommend self hosting and Wordpress.

rezzy
05-01-2009, 03:49 PM
I think a larger question, is what do you want to do with blogging? Is it just to talk about the kids, family etc. Or is it something business related?

For business, I think the best decision would to become selfhosted and use a domain you chose. Using somename.blogger.com is a huge advertisement for blogger and not your brand.

vangogh
05-01-2009, 04:09 PM
Bryan makes a really good point. You have to decide what you want to do with the blog, both right away and down the road. If it's only meant as a personal blog then it probably doesn't make a difference which route you go. If at some point you plan on doing more with the blog then I definitely recommend the self hosting option and I do like WordPress.

Do look to the future. If you make the decision to host at Blogger and later decide to move to your own self hosted WordPress blog it'll cost you more and you'll lose much of the marketing you might have put into the blog. Lots of people think they'll never do anything more with their blog than run a small personal blog, but I've seen many of those same people later want more and having gone the Blogger route hurt them later.

cbscreative
05-01-2009, 04:38 PM
With the above points in mind, even the free route seems best on WordPress hosted with them. You could always migrate to other hosting at some point if you wanted or needed to. Blogger is much more of a closed system that never provides any more options than what Google decides you should have. And if they make a change you don't like, too bad.

vangogh
05-01-2009, 06:30 PM
Agreed. If you do later want to move from a free blog account to a self hosted blog you'll find it easier if you started on WordPress.com than Blogger. Bloggers seems to be adding things to make the transition smoother, but it's still not easy.

elsoft
05-02-2009, 08:35 AM
Wow...Thanks to each of you.There have been fantastic responses.I get to know now why wordpress is preferred than blogger.Right now,I have a personal blog on blogger.May be I should consider moving onto wordpress sooner than I thought I should.

vangogh
05-02-2009, 01:39 PM
Just know it's not the simplest thing to move. It's not hard, but it can be a pain. WordPress can connect to Blogger and import your posts, but images will still be showing from your Blogger account so you'll need to keep the Blogger account open.

Before moving do a search for 'moving from blogger to wordpress' or similar. There are plenty of articles on steps you should take to make the move is smooth as possible.

Harold Mansfield
05-11-2009, 12:10 PM
I think if you have a personal blog, or are blogging just for passion and an outlet of ideas then just about any platform will do.
If you are blogging commercially...to make money...there is no question that a self hosted Word Press blog is the way to go.

* Blogger themes cannot compare to professionalism and variety of Word Press themes.

* Blogger is owned by Google, and even with your own domain on blogger, you still don't own it.

* Blogger functions are limited to what Google provides, Word Press is unlimited and anyone can create a plug in to add custom functions and there are thousands of them.

* Blogger is cheap labor to create content for Google's adwords program for a place to display ads (just my opinion of course)

* Some of the most fabulous looking blogs that I have ever seen have been made on Word Press, some of the worst spam blogs have been on Blogger.

* Many of the webs top publications use Word Press for their blogs, including Harvard University, The New York Times, M.I.T., Sony Playstation, Dell Computers, Xerox, Yahoo, Duke University, CNN, Fox News, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc., VH1, People Magazine, Vice President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Digg, Mahalo, Meebo, Flickr, Viddler and many more....all people that are smarter (or at least more successful :))than me and I trust their judgment and recommendation and like the way their blogs look. - Source (http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Matt/Famous_Blogs)

Lastly, I don't trust the blogger platform to be around for along time, considering that it is losing the platform war badly, and doesn't seem to be getting better to close the gap. My personal feeling is that if Adwords advertisers begin to complain about having their ads displayed on blogger blogs ( or continue to opt out of the content network) because of the lack of quality content and low conversion ratio..., then it will be nothing more than an expense for Google, and they will pull the plug, and it will only survive to host their own company blogs.

JMO of course.

elsoft
05-17-2009, 08:42 AM
Thats an interesting insight eborg.Thanks for sharing.