WordPress vs Blogger BlogSpot - Whose the Best

WordPress and Blogger users (or user to be), find out which blogging platform is the best. Is WordPress the best blogging platform? Is Blogger the best blogging platform? Both platforms or services are free and have a lot in common. If you are a beginner, I strongly recommend Blogger. You can post your article on the fly and worry less on the technicality of managing the blog internal coding. If you are a seasoned blogger, read through this post to find out the comparison in features and capabilities between Blogger and WordPress and then decide whether to stick on with Blogger or move on to WordPress.





WordPress and Blogger users (or user to be), find out which blogging platform is the best. Is WordPress the best blogging platform? Is Blogger the best blogging platform? Both platforms or services are free and have a lot in common. If you are a beginner, I strongly recommend Blogger. You can post your article on the fly and worry less on the technicality of managing the blog internal coding. If you are a seasoned blogger, read through this post to find out the comparison in features and capabilities between Blogger and WordPress and then decide whether to stick on with Blogger or move on to WordPress.

In practicality, the toughest part of the sign up involves choosing a name that will be the prefix for your blog’s address. WordPress blogs have domains with the wordpress.com suffix and Blogger blogs have the blogspot.com suffix. You choose the name in front of the suffix. Either way you will have a basic blog ready to go in just a couple of minutes.

About Blogger and WordPress

One of the most widely used blogging platforms, of course, is Blogger by Google. Blogger tends to get indexed in search engines a lot more quickly then other spots; this is because its owned by GOOGLE. With Blogger, you receive your name for free, but it will include a “Blogspot name (example: http://maasincityscandal.blogspot.com ) in the title. You also will have access to its very easily used software, and be able to add free or cheap templates to personalize your account.

WordPress offers free hosted and also self hosted software. WordPress is more for the professional blogger then most blogger programs out there. However, that comes with a price as there are less WordPress designers and it can be tricky, and confusing, if something goes wrong with your site. That is why some called WordPress as a blogging platform for the geek. Always remember to backup of your blog before you start messing around. WordPress comes with hundreds of templates to utilize, that are easily customized by just overwriting the pictures with new ones, or changing the color codes in the CSS template. There are also thousands of plugins to use to customize your blog for whatever your purpose is. From adding in video, to polls, to automatic signatures, its as simple as downloading, adding, and hitting an activate button. What I like about WordPress too, is if something is incompatible, it doesn’t just load it. It shuts off the plug-in and lets you know that it cant be loaded.

Blogging Flexibility

With Blogger.com you can have your own template, with WordPress.com you can not. The reason apparently are related to security concerns. However, the other side of the story is that whatever modifications are possible at WordPress.com, they are a lot cleaner and you do not have to redo it all over again, simply because you decided to change your template. And a lot of additions, deletions in the sidebar are still possible. Creating links in the sidebar, for example. You can simply define the category and add links to them. You won’t have to redo it with a change in template. While with Blogger.com, you must manually change the template code with HTML and then redo it with a template change. Any customization of blogger.com template requires some minimal knowledge of HTML. WordPress.com provides nice interface. But if you just want the control over HTML of your blog, well go for Blogger.com!

Platform Maturity

WordPress.com is under experimentation. That's why it have a version number. If you do not like to see little surprising changes and little messing up here and there on a daily basis, you would want to wait for sometime before trying to shift. For self-hosted WordPress, you are required once a while to update your WordPress version. You won't have those problem with Blogger.com Blogger.com is stable and cool that way.

Blog Simplicity (Ease of Use)

It is very easy to use Blogger using the WYSIWYG editor, with previews available before you have to publish the article/template. This is partly due to the fact that Blogger doesn’t have as many options for advanced information management. Blogger has now added many more options for managing a blog including integration with FeedBurner and a drag-and-drop page editor for page elements (gadgets).

WordPress, although easy to write articles, does require amateur knowledge of HTML/CSS (as well as due to it’s many features and menu items), which is one of the reasons which I was more inclined to using Blogger. For all you pro’s though who can handle the messy stuff Wordpress is the way, but being realistic, most of the population doesn't have a clue about CSS, and WordPress has no preview, so Im afraid that one will have to go to Blogger. And if you are serious about make money from blogging, wasting your time tweaking the HTML code for your blog post is the last thing you want to do.

Adverti$ing on your blog (money making potential)

WordPress.com does not allow third-party ad serving services like AdSense or AdBrite to be present on their blogs. Since Blogger is owned by Google they support AdSense advertising on blogs and include a page element to help ease integration. Since Blogger supports adding javascript from other sites, automatic ad serving from other services should work as well.

Search Engine Optimization and Traffic

There are many stories of getting indexed fast and ranking high in search engines from both Wordpress and Blogger users. As long as the content is good, the spiders will come.

When you post in Blogger, you can only “ping” a limited amount of sites, whereas with Wordpress on your own domain you can ping as many blog directories as you want, and start getting more traffic.

As a conclusion, I would say that WordPress is only slightly ahead in terms of optimization for search engines, and building large amounts of traffic.

Themes and customization

For Blogger, you can edit template layouts, styles and colors, or install a third party theme. This can be done by adding JavaScript pagelet or gadgets.

WordPress doesn't allow template editing. Style sheet editing is only available as a paid upgrade. Many of the 60+ themes let you upload a header image. Some have additional customization options. To add things, WordPress allowed you to include pre-built plugins.

Visitor stats

Blogger has no built stats. Since it is owned by Google and you have a Google account, you can check your detailed blog stats from Google Analytical. You can also include third party tracker scripts — or any type of script.

WordPress doesn't allowed scripts. The admin dashboard shows 2 days of stats and daily, weekly and monthly graphs. Side track a little bit, with no script allowed, you will not be able to monetised your blog unless you use the paid version of WordPress.

Blog Import Features

Blogger can import posts only from another BlogSpot blog. WordPress meanwhile allow you to import from Blogger, Type·Pad, Live·JournaI, MovabIe·Type or another WordPress blog.

Image storage

Blogger gives 1 Gigabyte for images space. There is no interface to browse through the images unless you sign up for Picasa Web Albums. WordPress gives 3 Gigabytes. Paid upgrades are available to add more space. You can also upload .ppt, .doc and .pdf files (more file types with an upgrade).

Photo Galleries

Blogger - You can use Picasa Web Albums.
WorPress - Simply add the tag [gallery] to any post or page (more info)

NOTE: For a photo galleries site, blogging platform either Blogger and WordPress are both not suitable. This is because for photo galleries, you may want your own artistic presentation and neat tricks to show off your photos. In short, Blogger and WordPress are not specialized in photo galleries.

Static pages

Blogger does not support static pages. All post are chronically order by date. That is the basic nature of blog - an event driven publishing of articles.
WordPress - Create posts or 'pages'. Static pages are listed in separate menus.

Categories

Blogger called it'Labels'. And WordPress called it 'Categories'.

Optional excerpts

Optional excerpts is not available in Blogger. Closer to it would be using Block Quote.
WordPress - Some themes allow unique text. Others depend on a "more" tag.

Post by email

Blogger allow you to submit posts by email. You can receive new posts by email too (helpful for team blogs). Post by email is not available for WordPress.

Blog Syndication

WordPress.com offers standard RSS feeds and includes native support for podcast enclosures. Blogger offers the less popular Atom syndication format. While RSS is the standard for syndication, many feed aggregators can also handle Atom feeds (just to satisfy Google, so syndication is not an issue for Blogger). In addition, services like Feedburner offer options to convert the feed to all usable formats and standards for RSS. WordPress offers RSS feeds for comments which is a feature not available via the Blogger service.

Google purchased FeedBurner in June of 2007 and now offers feed redirection so that you may use FeedBurner or other services to manage your Blogger RSS.

Contact forms

Contact forms is not available in Blogger. You could add a third-party contact form, however.
For WordPress, simply add the tag [contact-form] to any post or page.

Private blogs

For Blogger, you can restrict access to invited Google account holders or make the blog entirely private. With WordPress, you can restrict access to 35 invited WordPress account holders (unlimited with a paid upgrade). Alternatively, individual posts can be password protected or Private.

Team blogs or Team Blogging

Blogger only support Administrators and non-administrators only. With WordPress, you can multiply roles such as Administrator, Editors, Authors and Contributors. Actually not relevant if you blog on a one-man show capacity.

Comments or commenting

Blogger -Visual confirmation and moderation options, but no editing of comments to be fair.
WordPress - Moderation, comment editing and Akismet spam protection.

Publishing Location

WordPress saves the content of your blog on their servers. Blogger allows you the option of publishing the pages to your own server via FTP. This allows you to fully host the blog with your own domain name, eliminating the need to use one of the blogspot.com addresses. Some businesses may find this to be a plus if they want to have the blog seem completely integrated within their company website.

Wordpress.com now has the option to redirect your blog to a domain of your choosing. The files will still be published on WordPress.com but visitors will see your web address instead of one with ‘.worpdress.com’ at the end.

Blog Widgets

Blogger.com Widgets - Add a Gadget | Followers | Blog List | Subscription Links | Slideshow |
Newsreel | Video Bar | List | Link List [Blog Roll] | Picture | Text | HTML/JavaScript |
AdSense | Feed | Labels [categories] | Logo | Profile | Page Header | Blog Archive | Poll

Wordpress.com Widgets - Akismet | Archives | Blog Stats | Box.net file sharing | Calendar | Categories | del.icio.us | Flickr | Links | Meebo | Meta | Pages | Platial MapKit | Recent Comments | Recent Posts | RSS | Search | Sonific Songspot | Tag Cloud | Text | Top Clicks | Top Posts | Vod:Pod Videos | Twitter

Theme choices (Blog Templates)

Although the WordPress.com collection of 60+ themes sounds like a lot, many of them are quite disappointing. Two of the themes are specifically for the Christmas season, and of the remainder, a significant proportion are gaudy or tacky.

If you don't like any of the BlogSpot themes you can modify them or install third party themes.

NOTE: Those cool and professional WordPress template that you encountered are done by seasoned blogger who know how to trick the template internals and configurations.

Copyrights and Ownership of Content

Google has the authority to shut down your Blogger account without warning if they don’t like what you’re blogging about. You don’t have absolute control over your own blog. But rest assure, all blogspot blogs are maintained clean and safe.

With Wordpress, you own the domain name and the blog is hosted on your own account. You have full control over your content.

With the self-hosted version of Wordpress (not Wordpress.com), you’re free to write about anything you want, and use the software in any way you want. Yes, Blogger allows you to publish to your own domain, but they still own the database that holds your content! Don’t forget that!

HTML Coding

If you are a webmaster or familiar with HTML, Blogger allows you to embed CSS in your blog HTML codes.

FTP Connection

Both Blogger and WordPress support FTP connection but Blogger seems to lag behind in performance and reliability as far as FTP uploading is concerned.

Conclusion

The best advice for you (especially if you are a beginner) now is to take the time to start a test blog on both services. Work with both of them for a couple of weeks to see which one suits your needs best. Once you have made a decision on a favored platform you’ll also have the advantage of some time in the driver’s seat before you get into the blogging fast lane.

Both of these services have made great strides over the last couple of years. There is still no clear ‘winner’ if you will. But so long as Google is still alive, Blogger will be surely gain advantage over WordPress. It is just a matter of time before we see a shift in this blogging war. So as for me, I'll stay on safer ground.