Blogger v.s. Wordpress
By spiderman05
@spiderman05 (851)
Canada
December 3, 2007 6:05pm CST
I have been a regular user of Blogger since 2 years ago. Last week, I decided to try something new. Many bloggers have been migrating recently from Blogger to Wordpress. I said to myself, I will have to see what all this fuss is about.
I signed up for a wordpress account then I started a site about the Metro (read subway, read underground) in Montreal. It took me about 45 minutes to get myself familiar with the word press dashboard and start my web site. I thought to post on MyLot my impressions on both Blogger and Wordpress.
Before starting, I will have to mention that Wordpress, unlike Blogger, allows you to download the Wordpress software and host it yourself. I chose to host my site with Wordpress instead.
So, here are some pros and cons of both blogging services.
Wordpress Pros
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1- Wordpress has better themes. Blogs created with Wordpress generally look nicer than those created with Blogger.
2- Wordpress allows users to add various widgets to their blog's sidebars like Mybloglog widgets and all of this is done in a drag and drop way. Very convenient for beginners.
3- Wordpress is a software that does not only allow the creation of blogs, but also Web sites. Unfortunately, blogger only allows the creation of blogs.
4- The post editor of Wordpress is more advanced than that of Blogger. For instance, Worpress editor allows bloggers to insert special symbols.
5- It is straightforward to add banners to the blog's header. Wordpress tells you about the exact dimensions of the banner that you should add. Adding banners using Blogger leads generally to messy results.
6- Wordpress provides blog stats. As the stat scripts are hosted by the server, these are more accurate than any client-JavaScript-based solution.
Wordpress Cons
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1- Wordpress does not allow bloggers to customize the blog template at the CSS level unless they pay some annual fee. Customizing Blogger templates is free.
2- Bloggers has a disk quota of 50MB. There is no such limit in Blogger.
3- Adding Adsense units to Wordpress is not straightforward. Blogger software is Adsense-friendly. On the other hand, bloggers who host their own sites benefit from various plugins that makes it easier to integrate Adsense units.
Do you rather prefer blogger or wordpress when it comes to blogging? Did migrate from Blogger to Wordpress like many others did? Can you think of any other advantages/disadvantages of Wordpress when compared to Blogger? Or maybe you are using a wholly different blogging software.
2 people like this
8 responses
@JanMags (724)
• Philippines
4 Dec 07
gudness. i'm really an internet newbie. maybe you can help me a bit. what does it mean to be able to host your own blog in wordpress? what advantages can that bring? sorry for my newbieness but i just really can't understand yet. i'm using blogger now but i feel so restricted. i'm not techno savvy so my blog looks pretty drab
1 person likes this
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
14 Dec 07
The slow speed might also be due to the fact that Wordpress pages are generated dynamically and that the software itself is written in PHP a slower interpreted language.
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
6 Dec 07
You're welcome. I am not sure how old wordpress is, but I have the impression that many blogger improvements (that came with version 2) were inspired by wordpress for instance drag-and-drop style layout customization.
@chunter (1759)
• Singapore
4 Dec 07
I have no idea that many blogger are migranting from Blogger to Wordpress....and I would like to ask where you get this facts from?
I haven't use Wordpress before, but I dare to say that you can customise the themes on Blogger too if you know HTML programming....I have seen many blogs on Blogger that are customised very nicely...As for banners, like I have mentioned earlier, it is possible to customise the width of the blog to accommodate the banner and that is no mess at all....
I have a friend who uses Wordpress and he's not familiar with HTML...and he found Wordpress to be very tedious to use...
1 person likes this
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
4 Dec 07
Not a scientific study, though I keep stumbling up on blogs on mybloglog blogmad and other similar services whose authors migrated from Blogger to Wordpress.
For the record, I have never seen anybody migrating from Wordpress to Blogger.
Wordpress calcultes the dimensions of the banner for you. You do not neet to check the template styles for that. All you need afterwards is to adjust the size of your picture accordingly. Besides, the title of the blog is added automatically as an extra layer of your newly-created banner, much easier than in Blogger.
@pcsourcepoint (631)
• New Zealand
5 Dec 07
Thanks for the great review. I currently use blogger for my basic computer/internet ideas, and am considering migrating to wordpress or perhaps create a similar site. Because wordpress looks more web site orientated, there are many established wordpress professional sites (possibly involving groups of bloggers) with similar,and more indepth topics than mine.
This means it could be difficult to attract visitors. One such site is the popular Lifehacker (which looks wordpress based). I guess well researched content looks better on wordpress. So for the moment I'm still content with blogger...
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
14 Dec 07
I have the same impression too, that is professional bloggers tend to use wordpress instead of blogger.
Good luck with your blog. It is true that there is a lot of competition on technology topics in general which makes harder for new sites to get noticed. You very probably know this, just find s mall niche in technology, stick to it and you will become the expert in that niche. A necessary condition to attract visitors when you post on a popular topic. Alas, this condition is far from being sufficient.
@mensab (4200)
• Philippines
4 Dec 07
thank you for this very instructive information. your post made me feel that i made a good decision when i chose wordpress over blogger. although i did not migrate from blogger, i have heard from my friends that wordpress is user-friendly. for a newbie in the blogging world, i heed their call and tried wordpress. so far so good. only that in rare times i could not access my own blog for some reason unknown to me. i don't have any comparative basis but i think that wordpress is better for a newbie like me.
@amitavroy (4819)
• India
4 Dec 07
I have tried using Word press as a blocking option and let me tell you it is very nice and I a great rate. It is also very easy to customise, it has a lot of themes available on the net for a free which we can download a and install them without any real hassle. Whereas the blogger is something more advanced. You can do a lot of things with it but you need to have a bit of programming background and to customise it. So if you compare both of them home I guess would press would have few advantages and over its counterpart but still I don't know why when I was maintaining a block on wword press I decided not to continue much longer.
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
4 Dec 07
True, all the mentioned cons disappear (well, that's what I learned from the Wordpress documentation).
Another difference between Blogger and Wordpress is that in blogger pages are static whereas they are dynamic in Wordpress. It is possible to make the blog's front page static when the blog is hosted by Wordpress. I wonder if it is possible to make all the pages static when the blog is hosted by the blogger! That would be great.
