So I’ve been blogging on Blogger for about six months now. The only other thing I’ve blogged upon (with?) is MySpace, so I don’t have too much to compare it to.
But I get a bit frustrated with Blogger because it seems clunky, and gets persnickety when you start to add fun stuff like bullet points and/or pictures. Also, it seems to be a bit limited when it comes to layouts and customizing.
So…if you use something other than Blogger (e.g., TypePad, WordPress, or something else), and you’re happy with it…now might be the time to convince me to switch!
So what about it? What blog service do you use, and what do you like about it? Would you recommend it to others?
(And if you use Blogger and are happy with it, speak up! Maybe you’ll convince me to stay!) 🙂
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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Blogger is great because you don’t have to shell out for the domain name and storage space. WordPress.com is a similar venue with more options. I’ve been pining for the free days ever since starting graduate school. I’d give wordpress.com a look before go down the paid route, unless you’re a design fanatic or have too much free time. 🙂
I use Serendipity as my blog software, but you have to have your own web hosting to install that.
I doubt that you’ll find any software that is that much better and worth giving up your domain. In other words, if you switch, you’ll have to have all of your readers update their bookmarks, have all of those who link to your blog update their links, and you’ll lose your ranking in the search engines.
jeff-
i still use blogger. i looked into wordpress once, but decided it was not worth my time just to have a few more thingamjigs to spend my little time fiddling with.
what helped me decide was looking at the things on others’ blog that really make a difference to me when I’m there. (keeping in mind that i see all of them at least initially through my reader which shows none of those widgets anyway.) what i realized was that the gizmos i though would be neat to have were a bit wearisome to me when i read on other blogs.
WordPress is better than blogger except in the realm of theme variety. If you’re looking for basics only go with that. Jeff’s advice is spot on
I have a free WordPress account and am not impressed. You can check out a comparison of the two here.
I’ll be interested to see what you end up doing Jeff.
Jeff, Tim, Cindy, “redwinegums”, KB,
Thanks, all, for the input. I was honestly surprised at the show of support for Blogger.
One reason I was thinking of switching was I know of at least one person who switched to WordPress and liked it better. But it seems the tradeoffs probably aren’t worth it overall. Tim’s remarks were most compelling; I’d rather not lose my search engine rankings or risk the growing number of subscribers (which I’m very pleased with). So for now, anyway, I guess I’ll stay put. 🙂
At one time I got frustrated with Blogger when they introduced “improvements” and a lot of the stuff that worked previously stopped working, but they fixed it eventually.
So now I have a Blogger blog and a WordPress one, but the WordPress one seems to attract more readers, i don’t know why.
Ooooh a whole other blog…. huh… sneaky and tantilizing!!!
I like Blogger. Maybe you should spice things up with a new background or something. pyzam.com is one place to look.
I did the switch from Blogger to WordPress, and I’m so much happier with it.
WordPress has stats at a glance, which I love. I don’t have to log into statcounter to see what’s been happening. Also, it automatically finds other blogs who are linking to you, and tells you what links people have been following from your blog too.
Plus it’s prettier and cleaner, does 1, 2 and 3 column blogs easily, and has a great admin panel (once you get used to the change).
Funnily enough, my readership has gone up rapidly since switching. I didn’t seem to lose anybody through the cracks, and I kept an eye on who was still linking to my old blog on their blogrolls via statcounter and reminded them to change the address.
Personally, I stick with it because it is simple. I have done web design and graphics for more than 15 years. If I get one of the other systems with more flexibility, I will spend more time designing and customizing than I should. So I stick with blogger to keep my focus on the content.