blog // blogger vs wordpress

16 Mar 2012

The time is coming... the age old debate of Blogger vs Wordpress.

I haven't really done any research on the difference, but I've been told that Wordpress is more customisable? Then again, how much of a pain is it to update all links and move everything over?

Hmm... What do you use?

5 comments :

  1. Would you be staying on the Wordpress or Blogger hosted option (i.e. username.blogspot.com or username.wordpress.com) or would you be downloading their blogging software and hosting it yourself? That's the thing you'd have to keep in mind when researching the topic online - whether people are comparing web-hosted Wordpress and Blogger or self-hosted Wordpress and Blogger. The self-hosted ones are hugely customisable, so there probably wouldn't be too much of a difference between Wordpress and Blogger. I use Wordpress at the moment and I used it for Dr Gateau, and Chris uses the Wordpress software for his blog too and is happy with it, but way back in the distant past (around 2003/2004) I used Blogger and it seemed good too at the time (presumably it's changed a lot since then but it's probably still decent).

    As for the web-based stuff, I have no idea. I've created a Wordpress account before and it seemed okay. You get a choice of about 180 different templates/themes, and some are pretty good, but they're not hugely customiseable in terms of the overall layout (just the standard options to insert a custom image as a header, change the colours, that sort of thing). However, if I consider all the Blogspot blogs I've seen compared to all the Wordpress blogs I've seen, the Blogspot ones as a whole give me an impression of not having a great range of templates - I can pretty much tell straight away when I'm on a Blogspot blog, without needing to look at the URL. Wordpress seems to offer a lot more variety in terms of layouts and themes and they look more professional, but that's just my impression.

    As for moving things, it really depends on what Blogger offers you at the moment. Does it offer the option to export all your blog content as one file? If so, in what format? Web-hosted and self-hosted Wordpresses allow you to export your entire blog as an XML file, or import other XML files, but if Blogger doesn't allow you to export as XML, there will probably be problems (there might be problems anyway). I can't imagine there'd be any easy way to make the links transfer successfully either - the web-based Blogger and Wordpress seem to use different formats for internal links, so if you link to other posts of yours, you'd probably have to change the links manually if you changed to Wordpress.

    If you want to keep all your past posts and content, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to change to Wordpress unless you're really unhappy with Blogger. Wordpress does seem to offer a better range of templates and layouts that look more sophisticated and interesting, but that's just my personal impression (if I go and look at all the Blogspots in my web history and in my Google Reader, seriously, they all look pretty much identical). But like I said, transferring all your content to Wordpress would probably be a huge effort (you might have to do it manually, post by post, depending on what Blogger offers for export options), so if you do want to change to Wordpress, it might be better to just start a new blog from scratch there. That might be a good idea anyway, even if you don't end up using it, as you'll be able to test it out and see if you like it.

    Here's are some pretty basic articles that sum up the main differences for the web-hosted Blogger and Wordpress:
    http://www.underworldmagazines.com/top-differences-between-wordpress-vs-blogger/
    http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2011/12/09/wordpress-blogger/

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  2. Hey Helena,
    I'm clearly a total newbie when it comes to blogging and I didn't do that much research into it but I ended up going with Blogger instead of Wordpress because of the control over ads with it. You have to pay to have no ads on your Wordpress: http://en.support.wordpress.com/no-ads/

    That was the main point for me since I wanted a free blog to start with but didn't want ads to come along with it.

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  3. I've had both, and I must say... yes Wordpress got that instantly fancy-looking things, and complete different makeovers and layouts.. but it just doesn't work for me. Blogger is, for me, much easier to use. And also customizable to, yes, a not-that-limited degree. It's just how much html or css codes you use to change it.

    And I think blogger is just very nice because of the blogger feed.

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  4. Wordpress advantage - you can trick people into thinking it's a site ;) andcutfilm.com

    I didn't find it too hard to transfer over, but I purchased a domain (cheap) & web hosting ($6 per month) from GoDaddy. Easy an reliable & love my new space. Looks so much better. But my Blogger site didn't look half as good as yours.

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  5. Thanks for all the advice! It sounds like I should stick with what I've got for much less heartache. I think it might be time to change my layout though...

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