Blogger Versus WordPress
This post is for all you bloggers out there, so if you’re not interested in that sort of thing, just glaze on over it
You know I’m a huge proponent of the Blogger Platform – I just love it! But everyone loves WordPress. Several months ago I made the jump, and I’m here to dish my thoughts about it. I’m not an expert, just my opinion after trying both – -
I love Blogger. Hands down. When people ask me about starting a blog, I always direct them to Blogger. I even have a video on
People who love WordPress are always trying to get you to switch – I was on the fence, off the fence, back on for a year or two. My numbers had dropped (or so I thought! little did I know they were reporting wrong) and nothing I was doing was working to grow my readership, so I was desperate for a change and thought WP might be my answer. I switched a few months ago. I didn’t go into it blind – I contribute to several blogs who use the WP platform and so I’d been exposed to the basics.
So here ya go – - Why I Don’t Love WP:
-No Easy Font Changes – you can’t just select the font and change the size. Not an option. Boo! I like varying my font within a post, but I had to give that up (see the title above this section – it sure would have been nice to have that in a slightly larger font – instead I just had to bold it)
-No Easy Photo Sizes – in Blogger, you just pick “small” “medium” or “large” – easy peasy. In WP, you can change the photo size, but you have to take several steps and even pick the actual size (like how many pixels wide, etc) which is giving me way too many options
-NO Side-by-Side Pics – this might be my #1 complaint. My first day in WP I messaged a friend “how do I get my pictures side-by-side?” thinking I was missing something, but she’s all “you can’t. You can make a collage, and then put the collage in as one image” – what?! that’s a TON more work. In blogger you can just drag the pictures where you want them, and get them side-by-side. I love using side-by-side pics, so this is a big negative for me!
-Military Time – when scheduling your posts, first off it’s not a drop-down menu like blogger, you have to type in the time (again, i don’t need that much control!). And instead of it being “1:00 pm” it’s “13:00″ - I don’t like thinking and converting time.
-No Auto Google - in Blogger, every time I posted it would automatically post my link to my G account – I love auto! WP doesn’t, and I hardly ever remember to do it.
-No Phone Pics – one of my favorite features in Blogger is that it knows all, and when I want to insert a photo into a post it has the standard “upload” option but also the “from your phone” option – it automatically has all the pictures from my phone, right there ready to be dropped into a blog post. I love that feature and really miss it!
-Hosting Fees – Blogger was free. I paid $10 a year for my domain name, but that was it. With WP, I pay a hosting fee every month.
-Scrolling – when you write a post, the scroll is weird and I’m always having to rescroll the page and then scroll within the post writing – only myself might know what I’m talking about, but it drives me crazy.
-Spam – I get bunches of more spam than ever before coming through my filters. I don’t know if they can find me easier on WP, or if the comments were there all along and they were captured as spam on WP – who knows, but some are pretty comical, so there’s that.
In general, everyone said “WP is awesome. You’re going to love it” and I don’t love it. I’m not all on board. I’d still recommend Blogger for most people. I could do anything in Blogger, manipulate my layout to whatever, add in gadgets, work in the HTML, etc. With WP, you have much more control over everything, but I don’t necessarily think I need all that control. I can’t figure a lot of things out myself and I for sure wouldn’t feel comfortable tweaking my HTML.
Now don’t get me wrong – even though I knew I loved Blogger, I switched anyway. I don’t hate WP – I just don’t love it. My motivation to switch was to grow my readership, and that has happened (maybe it would have happened even if I stayed on Blogger, not sure). The final straw in my deciding to switch was the possibility of being able to organize my tutorials pages – that’s a big deal for me (in blogger you have to manually set it all up, and WP it’ll be a little more automated). After I set it all up, I’ll be more on board with the so-called awesomeness of WP.
Some things like about WP:
–Email response to comments – this is huge and maybe worth the switch. Maybe. I can reply to a comment on my blog, and the author is automatically emailed the response as well – LOVE that! on blogger I could response directly through email, or I could leave a comment on my blog, but not both (well, I could manually do both, but that’s a hassle)
-Updated tutorial page – I haven’t gotten in to revamp and reorganize, but it already is better than before and auto updates, so that’s a big big deal to me.
-I am part of the “in” blogging crowd – when people mention a super cool new plugin, I can be a part of checking it out. (this probably shouldn’t matter, but it’s nice to be mainstream with others in the blogging world)
-I think it overall it’s helping grow my blog traffic, but I’m not for sure how much of it is WP and how much of it is the hard work I’ve been putting in
So should you switch?? Good question – I really don’t think it’s a must. I’d say if you’ve been on Blogger for over 5 years and are trying to take your blog another step, it might be something to consider. I obviously switched and overall it was the best decision for me. But I don’t think as a new blogger you need to jump over to it. Good luck!
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