WordPress vs The Rest

For my first post, I find it appropriate to analyze how I got here in the first place.

It is entirely possible to be fine with choosing any one of these two blogging options. For all intents and purposes, the key to a great Weblog is the content of each post, and not its host (no rhyme intended). Both Weblogging hosts get the job done, it’s just a matter of style and usability/user-experience.

So how did I end up with WordPress? I’ll be honest, I initially chose Blogger without even reading about WordPress. I already have a LiveJournal account for my personal use that I’ve maintained (quite lazily I might add) for the past five years so I wanted to try something new. If you’re accustomed to doing research on comparisons, it’s easy as going to Google and typing in a few keywords, “blogger vs wordpress” for example, and you’ll find plenty of analysis by fellow webloggers that favor one over the other. So let me first take a look at how quickly it would take for me to create a blog, and make my first post on both Blogger.com and WordPress.com.

Blogger: From Blogger’s home page, you are prompted for a sign in to use Blogger with your Google Account. (Most people have one, but if not, then you can easily create one in your first steps. Then once you link your Google Account to Blogger, you can create a blog by providing a name for its URL (http://yournamehere.blogspot.com) and a title for the blog itself. Lastly you choose from a few different templates (none of which really stood out to me) and you were finished. Once the blog is created, you can make a posting using the Blogger post tool.

Wordpress: From the home page, you are presented with a large Sign Up button. Click this, and literally, you can have a blog in seconds. Asking for pretty much the same information as Blogger, the process was straightforward, and navigating the site to customize my blog seemed pretty intuitive. I particularly liked how previewing themes was integrated into the page (using AJAX I believe), vs Blogger’s pop up windows.

What features got me to stick with WordPress, instead of Blogger?

• Well for one, Blogger has no way for you to export your postings to a file, or import any postings from other blog sites. WordPress lets you import/export blog posts easily.
  • Because I plan on setting up and self-hosting my own blog in the future using WordPress.org, WordPress gives me more flexibility.
• As you might have guessed earlier, the look of the built in templates on WordPress appealed to me over Blogger’s.
• WordPress allows for different categories/pages to be created, Blogger doesn’t. (This could be remedied by having a different blog for each category on Blogger, but this can get kind of messy)
• Word count on the built in Post tool on WordPress (this helps for my assignments which require me to write approximately 500 words).

I’ve made my decision now, and hopefully I can stick with it. Here are some links that helped me decide.

http://www.bloggertalk.net/article96.html

http://noran-hussein.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogger-vs-wordpress.html

http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html