Blogger Vs. WordPress (1/10)
Welcome to my new “How To Blog” series! In this series, I’ll try to put my knowledge to good use and shed some light on the basic of blogging. You will learn how to set up a self-hosted blog, what are the must-have plugins, how to attract readers, how to monetize your blog etc. I’ll publish a new “How To Blog” post every Saturday.
To start this series, I’d like to answer a much asked question: what is the difference between Blogger/ Blogspot and self-hosted WordPress?
Remember, I was on Blogger for a year… before I moved to WordPress. I received a lot of emails and comments asking me which one is best and what was the difference between the two.
Indeed, it’s sometimes hard to make a decision, whether you are new to blogging or are looking for the best platform. So here is my comparison chart:
| Blogger/ Blogspot | WordPress | |
| Developed by | Google Inc. | Matt Mullenweg (and a team of developers) |
| How it works | It’s a blog publishing system.You will need to sign up on Blogspot (open an account) and choose an URL. Then you can start blogging. | It’s a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL databaseBasically, you need to download the software script (WordPress) and install it on a web host. You will also need to buy a domain name (an URL, the address of your blog). |
| Price | Free | Free download (under the GNU license) of the WordPress script.Additional costs: a domain name and a web host. |
| Typical URL | www.yourawesomeblog.com | |
| Sponsored | There’s a Blogspot navigation bar on top of your blog. It can be hacked but this is against the TOS (term of service). | No sponsored link unless you choose to. If you download a free theme for your blog, you will most likely have to leave the designer’s link in your footer. |
| Knowledge required | You don’t need much technical knowledge. Signing up on Blogger is as easy as opening an email account. Drag and drop widgets.
Tweaking CSS is quite easy and only requires basic HTML in most cases. |
You will need some technical knowledge to install WordPress (FTP files etc.). Plugins and widgets are quite easy to install (just a few clicks in most cases).
Edit PHP and CSS to tweak your blog. |
| Help available | There’s a Blogger Help Center. Many blogs/ website offer help in tweaking and hacking your blog. | There’s an official support forum but I never found it helpful. There’s a lot of “geeky” speak and users have a nasty habit of looking down at people less skilled than them,That said, many blogs offer hacks, advices and themes. Among my favorite: WordPress Max, WPDesigner, and Hack WordPress. |
| Reliability | Possible down time due to Blogger maintenance.
There is somewhat of a grey area on who owns the blog: you or Google? Bloggers have sometimes had their blog blocked or deleted without reason… |
You have 100% control over your blog.
Problems can include broken themes/ plugins (especially when updating) and host maintenance issues. |
| Customization | Choose from a lot of themes (see for example Jackbook).
Tweak your CSS and add widgets. |
WordPress is an open source project… the sky is the limit.
You can choose from thousands of plugins and widgets (WordPress Plugins Database, WordPress Plugins), themes and hacks. |
| Spam | I rarely got spam on Blogger… not sure if it was just because my blog wasn’t that popular or I was lucky. | WordPress users tend to be spammed more often. Fortunately, plugins like Akismet usually filter spam comments. |
| Marketing/ SEO | Indexed quickly. | The URL looks more professional. Great SEO plugins. |
| Future | Google is a major company (duh!) and not likely to give up Blogger any time soon. That said, during the year I used it, I found improvements were coming slowly. I ended up tweaking my blog by myself 90% of the time. | WordPress is updated quite frequently and thousand of people develop their own plugins and widgets, usually available for free. There is always something new… and I love it. |
Please note that I’m comparing Blogger with self-hosted WordPress, not WordPress.com, which is a free platform similar to Blogger. I’m also aware they are many great blogging platform… I just choose the two that seem to be the most popular, and that I happen to know.
Finally, I’m really happy I switched to self-hosted WordPress. I think Blogger is great and it’s very user-friendly for beginners, but I found it limited after a while: not enough hacks, no control over my comment pages (which are all designed the same and don’t really fit a tweaked theme), a sponsored domain name… I find my WP blog much more personal.
Final word: if you’re an occasional blogger, don’t bother with WordPress which can be time consuming, especially at first. If you want to take your blogging further or if you want to be more self-reliant, move to WordPress.
Related posts:
- All About Blogging: 8 Neat WordPress Plugins
- The Best Plugins (2÷10)
- Must Have On Your Blog (5÷10)
- Tweak Your Blog (6÷10)
- Correr Es Mi Destino Reloaded !
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[…] away! Some of these plugins were adpated for Blogger etc. And anyway, maybe it will decide you to switch to WordPress! (just teasing […]
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[…] now you have chosen between the two main blogging system, now that you have nicely set up your blog, you’re still missing something. Oh yeah. […]
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[…] I learned a lot in the past four years. First, I started writing on Blogger and eventually switched to self-hosted WordPress a year later. As I wanted to improve my blog, I […]
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I have been trying to figure out when to switch. In my case, I need more control over tags, categories, etc., so it is easier to locate other posts from the past. But, I am worried about the upgrade process itself. I don’t want to have to manually link every photo on my blog! As you have seen, I use a lot of pics.
Shantanus last blog post..Thomas Keller’s Bouchon
Hello! I like your site! Reader from Russia…
makss last blog post..out connects
What surprises me is that there aren’t more WordPress.com hosted sites around. I’ve not yet tried their service, but am considering it, as I’m working on content and layout for a number of niche blogs, and one can still build a very profitable site using free hosting.
Layne | Reward Rebels last blog post..The Art Of Internet Marketing Promotion
Hey Zhu,
Congrats on the first article of this series
!
This was a great idea; and it gave me a lot of information (can’t wait to read more)!
Now, I have a fellow blogger who saw her wordpress site cancelled without any further notice (I found it so odd), but that is a nuisance that occurs in any internet company (perhaps except with MS, who reply immediately) *nodding*!
I salute your for such a great endeavour, darling
!
Cheers
Max Coutinhos last blog post..Letter to China
Long time viewer / first time poster. Really enjoy reading the blog, keep up the excellent work. Will definitely start posting more oftenin the future.