Post Mortem: Blogger vs. WordPress

I started this blog on Blogger. Six months later, I migrated all my posts and comments to WordPress. And I have never looked back. This week, a friend of mine did the same thing, and I started thinking.

I have never heard of someone migrating the opposite direction: from WordPress to Blogger.

Because despite all the good things that Blogspot has going for it, WordPress is simply a better platform for internet communication. So nearly a year after I started my blog, I thought I would do a “post mortem” breakdown of my experiences with both ends of the blogging spectrum.

What Blogger Has Going For It

• It’s simple. Very simple. And personally, I think that Blogger is probably too simple. Initially, I loved that it was point, click, publish. It was easy to break in my blogging chops with it. But when I found that I wanted more out of blogging, I could not get that from my Blogger account.
• Google owns it. Like my calendar, email, and documents, I thought accessing my blog through my catch-all Google account would be a great thing. It turns out to just be a “meh” thing because as awesome as automatic picture hosting at Picasa was, I found that it being tied to my other services provided no real benefit.
• You can put ads on it. Unlike WordPress.com (the free version of WP), Blogger addresses allow users to use their Google AdSense accounts on their blog, monetizing it. Unless you’re getting a lot of traffic, AdSense pays squat anyway. But still, the fact that you can do this on your blog is nice. Pennies add into dollars eventually, after all.
• Using your own domain name is free. If you own your own domain name (professorbeej.com, for instance), you can toss it up in Google’s Blogger Dashboard, and your URL is changed, backlinks and permalinks, too. They all redirect. WordPress.com charges $10 a year for that service. Now, you already have to pay for the domain registry, but once it’s yours, it’s yours on Blogger. No extra fees.

What WordPress Has Going For It

Let me preface this by saying that I never used WordPress.com for a blog. I have only used WordPress.org’s self-hosted software, so there may be differences of which I am unaware regarding WordPress’ free sites.

• Comments are easy. Gordon said it best in a comment when I first migrated to WP: “Commenting on blogger is like getting your teeth pulled out.” He’s right. Unless the blog admin has it set, there is no default way to just sign in with your name and URL to leave a comment. You have to login, captcha, and then post. WP simply lets readers toss a name/email and say what they want to say. No verification, no nothing.
• WordPress helps build a community of readers. Part of how WP does this is through its comment system. That aside, the dashboard also allows bloggers to see incoming links to their site, allowing them to enter into cross-blog communication much more easily. Given that I see blogging as a way of communicating with people, this bullet is very important to me. My blog would be nowhere without its readers, nor will yours. Being able to communicate and enter into dialogues as easily as possible is important, and it is something that WordPress allows far more easily than Blogspot.
• Customization abounds with WordPress. Installing a new theme/template/widget in Blogger was like scratching out my eyes and trying to put them back in with my feet. I had to edit XML and fine-tune that one piece of code until I got it just right in Blogger; however, in WordPress, if I want something, I download a plugin (from the search directly in the user dashboard!), and it will often have its own options page for options to customize it to my liking. If I want a new theme, I upload the zip file and it is automatically installed and ready to use. No fuss, no muss.
• The developer community for WordPress far exceeds that of Blogger. If you want to do something with WordPress, someone else does, too, and they’ve already written a widget/plugin for it. The same goes for themes and templates. Searching for Blogger themes (even premium themes) was a headache and a half. No one seems to spend the time on Blogger templates and plugins like they do WordPress. There may be an equivalent number of Blogger and WP themes out there, but the quality of the WP ones shines through immediately.
• Stat tracking. Free vs. free, what little I know about WordPress.com wins out based solely on stat tracking. WordPress.com blogs come automatically with software that tracks your incoming visitors, page views, and links. Unfortunately, the self-hosted software doesn’t provide visitor information, so I have to use Google Analytics to find that stuff out, but my theme (Thesis, affiliate link) has a place for that so I don’t even have to mess with code like I did with Blogger.

Conclusion

I’ve had a much better experience in my time with WordPress than I ever did with Blogger. WordPress is far more robust and professional than Blogger is, and it is more conducive to building a community than Blogger.

If you’re just starting out and your plans are to blog for family and friends about what your cat did or random thoughts you might have every now and again, then Blogger will be fine. But if you plan on blogging for an audience and want to connect with them, WordPress is the way to go.

So to answer my initial query: why does no one migrate from WordPress to Blogger? For the same reason one doesn’t trade in a 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo for a 1974 Ford Pinto. It’s just not done.