UPDATE: June 17, 2010
Provided that you change to a theme that does have the custom menus feature you can achieve what you want to do.
Have you ever wanted to have a different title for one of your pages than the label displayed in your site’s navigation?
Ever wanted to change the order of the list of pages to an order you chose yourself?
Ever wanted to be able to mix pages, categories, and random links in your navigation instead of your theme deciding for you?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re in luck! The new custom menus feature will do all those things. The themes that have this custom menu feature are listed in support documentation and here’s an article Custom menus arrive at wordpress.COM that provides more insight into setting up a custom menu.
Update: August 24, 2010
WordPress.com has now added “more ways to share“, and you can find the instructions for adding these social networking buttons to your posts in the support documentation at this link – Sharing.
Blogger Sucks: WordPress Rocks!
Like most bloggers I began on a free hosted blogging platform. In contrast to those who wish to make an income from blogging – I had no such agenda. I began blogging on Blogger software and found it easy to use, but when I decided to try WordPress.com I found there were remarkable contrasts between the software, the features, and the availability of support. Today there’s no doubt in my mind that free hosted WordPress software is superior in every way.
My major beef with Blogspot has to do with the validation. My SEO mentor claims that w3c validation isn’t important for optimization, but I disagree (not to his face, of course) if the code can’t be read easily, how is it supposed to be indexed and consistantly referenced in the SERPs?
The validation errors exist regardless of the template, it’s the way they have the XML set up – the navbar especially has a bunch of validation errors (of course, you can get rid of the navbar legally with your own domain). But wordpress blogs seem to validate like cake right out of the box. — codesucker
Well, there were at least 9 reasons I chose to delete my blogspot blog in 2006 and remain at wordpress.com instead. Here they are summarized:
(1) lack of timely Staff responses to technical support tickets;
(2) lack of a peer-to-peer technical support forum and no sense of community;
(3) templates that did not validate;
(4) limited theme selection and very few themes I considered to be suitable and attractive as well as functional;
(5) no ability to create static pages in the software ( workaround must be used);
(6) awkward comment systems and lack of plugins to increase functionality;
(7) no capacity to use categories or tags that search engines treated as keywords, and consequently no central global tagging pages like wordpress.com that provides traffic from search results;
(8) the blogspot subdomain had many RSS scraper blogs and splogs;
(9) there were also many no quality or low quality content blogs, as well as, blogs with plagiarized content that were obviously just being pimped out to make an income from adsense clicks and affiliate schemes.
User Interface
One of the reasons I moved my blog from blogger to wordpress in 2006 was because the WordPress.com interface had more of the features I wanted and used. Many changes have been made since then and now the WordPress interface is even better.
Importing
I had no difficulty when it came to exporting the contents of my Blogger blog out of it and into a WordPress.com blog, as WordPress software provides for the import of blogs from Import from Blogger, Yahoo! 360, LiveJournal, TypePad, MovableType or another WordPress blog. Blogger provides only for import from another Blogger (blogspot) blog.
Spam Blogs and Splogs
Blogger was full of splogs and spam blogs in 2006 and is even worse today due to the recession and blogger initiated advertising is allowed on free hosted blogspot blogs. Google owns Adsense and Blogger is where you find people who have stables of free hosted low quality blogs and no quality splogs pimped out for pennies.
This is not so at WordPress.com where advertising is not allowed on free hosted blogs and where free hosted blogs cannot be used to drive traffic to third party sites. Moreover, WordPress.com members do not hesitate to report and WordPress Staff and have a zero tolerance level for sploggers and spammers.
Technical Support
In contrast to the black abyss that was Blogger support I discovered that WordPress.com had two forms for technical support and both rocked. I quickly discovered that WordPress.com had a peer to peer technical support forum where I could ask questions and get prompt answers to my questions from volunteers. Therefore I rarely needed to contact Staff but when I did they delivered – support is 24/7 at WordPress.com. The FAQs at WordPress.com was not extensive in 2006 but today WordPress.com Support is an outstanding resource.
Commenting Systems
The comment systems for Blogger sucked. I had difficulty leaving comments on Blogger blogs and receiving them as well. I could moderate comments but could not edit them. In contrast, the comment systems on WordPress.com blogs were excellent, and one can both moderate and edit comments as well.
Spam Protection
The Akismet comment spam protection was also better at WordPress.com than what was available at Blogger and this still is the case.
Categories, Tags and Search Engine Referrals
WordPress.com supports categories and tags which are recognized by search engines, indexed and deliver targeted readers to blogs, Blogger does not. One can’t sort posts into different focuses at Blogger unless you know how to hack the platform.
Woth WordPress, not only can you add categories and tags with ease, but you can also display each category differently on your front page. Moreover, the search engines acknowledged and indexed the categories and tags on my posts, so I had a better flow from search engine referrals than I ever had at Blogger.
Also at WordPress.com the assigned categories and tags on my posts were automatically posted onto the WordPress.com global tag pages upon publication, and that meant the WordPress.com global tagging pages sent me referrals as well.
Speed of Indexing
There was propaganda that since Google owned Blogger, they tended to favor Blogger accounts. My experience of having a blog on each platform demonstrated that it was rubbish.
Static Pages and Password Protected Posts
The ability to create static pages that sit outside the blog structure was and still is absent from Blogger software. It can only be achieved by using a hack ie.creating a horizontal nav bar and linking to it and creating posts that had to be backdated. However, at WordPress.com I could create static pages as easily as I could create posts. I also discovered I could password protect a post at wordpress.com, but could not do so at Blogger.
Editor
I preferred the tinyMCE editor at WordPress.com as it has two functions. It’s both a visual and an HTML editor and one can switch back and forth from one to the other in a single click.
Widgets
At Blogger one has to use third party widgets which they must find on the net. Some work well and others do not. At WordPress.com I could simply go into my dashboard and drag widgets to a sidebar and activate them.
Image storage
Although Blogger provided only 1 gigabite of storage space, every WordPress.com blog comes woth 3 gigabites of strorage space and additional upgrades can be purchased to increase it.
File Types
Users can upload the following file types to their WordPress.com blogs:
Images: jpg, jpeg, png, gif
Documents: pdf (Portable Document Format; Adobe Acrobat)
.doc, .docx (Microsoft Word Document), ppt, pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation), odt (OpenDocument Text Document)
Additional file types can be uploaded to WordPress. com blogs by purchasing Space upgrades.
There are other differences between the two that were not of any importance to me therefore I have not included them. It’s my opinion that Blogger sucks and WordPress rocks! The only reasons I can ascertain for choosing Blogger over WordPress.com are that Blogger allows the use of third party javascript and advertising and WordPress.com does not.
References:
Blogger vs. WordPress.com Comparison Chart – 2009
10 Reasons to dump Blogger and date WordPress right NOW!
Self hosting wordpress bloggers see:
The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog
Related post found in this blog:
Adsense click fraud is a fools’ game
How and why to get your own domain
T3CK
September 25, 2009
Great article and very solid valid points. thanks for sharing.
P.s. I retweeted the article.
timethief
September 25, 2009
Thanks times two :)
JP
September 25, 2009
You forgot another major benefit: trackbacks!
timethief
September 25, 2009
Indeed trackbacks are very important. I’m sorry I missed them so thanks for commenting and keeping me on my toes.
Charles Rinehart
September 25, 2009
Say what you want, but I make money from blogspot with affiliates. You can’t with WP. So horay for WP huh?
timethief
September 25, 2009
Thanks so much for leaving the predictable comment I expected to receive.
We both know that it takes the equivalent of one Starbucks coffee per month to hire a good webhost and self host free WordPress software. So if you aren’t making enough to do that and work on the superior software that the vast and overwhelming majority of blogging pros use ie. WordPress then I’m offering you my sympathy.
UneFilleAmericaine
September 25, 2009
I have been on WordPress a grand total of 2 weeks and can agree with you 100%. Why oh why did I wait so long to make the move? WordPress is so clear, so simple and so customizable it’s amazing to me. I loaded a custom template onto Blogger when I started my blog back in January, but to this day, I am confused as to how I managed it. On WP, all it takes is a single button to activate. I can change the look of my blog lickety split and if I need to, I can view the code line by line to correct errors.
I’m thrilled. My only complaint, give WordPress.com users the ability to add custom templates or expand the selection of templates available. The admin interface is awesome, so much better than the Blogger interface in every single way. No comparison.
I am a total novice when it comes to HTML, but after two weeks on WP, I am so inspired that I want to take a class on HTML so I can design for WordPress.
timethief
September 27, 2009
@UneFilleAmericaine
I knew you would love going self hosted with wordpress. Congrats! While it’s true that there are only 70 or so theme choices at wordpress.com about half of those do allow for scustom headers. This theme I’m using on this blog also allows for some further citomizarion too. Any wordpress.com blogger who can edit css can purchase an upgrade for waht amounts to 4 cents per day and have at the appearance. They can’t of course edit templates and that will never be allowed. This is a multiuser blogging platform and that means that all bloggers with the same theme are sharing the same underlying template. If editing of it was allowed then every other blogger using the same theme would be faced with the same edits.
The Admin interface at wordpress since the huge shift that occurred to 2.7 is awesome and I agree with you Blogger does not come anywhere near comparing to it.
Thanks for commenting and best wishes.
SBA
September 26, 2009
Finally something we can disagree on (LOL). Using the logical comparison you made, yes WP makes sense on paper. But Blogger suits the ‘emotional’ needs of so many bloggers who range from ‘in it for a buck’ to ‘just want to show my family photos’. It may not be pretty and it may constantly try to imitate WP’s eloquence, but it does not suck. Actually Blogger tries to imitate the self-hosted WP image which surpasses free WP! There is no official Blogger support to speak of, but there is a vast network of blogging tips & template providers.
As UneFilleAmericaine said:
“My only complaint, give WordPress.com users the ability to add custom templates or expand the selection of templates available.” — I agree it would be nice, but then maybe we should just pay for self-hosted. WP has no need to extend itself any further — go to self-hosted or stay with Blogger. lol
The abililty to customize and use even a small amount of html is a huge advantage for personalizing a weblog. Having extensively used and hacked Blogger I can see how it differs from WP, but I’m not convinced it sucks. Each suits different purposes, depending on the blogger. This may be a case of ‘ignorance can be bliss.’
timethief
September 27, 2009
But Blogger suits the ‘emotional’ needs of so many bloggers who range from ‘in it for a buck’ to ‘just want to show my family photos’.
Emotional needs – pffft! IMHO people who cannot code and who do not know anything about blogging, but ‘just want to show my family photos’ are far better served by starting out on wordpress.com than they are on blogspot software.
I have watched newbies start at blogspot on templates that don’t validate out of the box (over 300 markup errors) and before they have even published a post they start adding all kinds of third party widgets, some with bad script. The result is a nightmare that they aren’t even aware of. Then they have a friend of a friend of a friend start instructing them in hacking the template on top of the mess.
I do admit that my post title is “edgy” and maybe a bit unfair but I’m sick to death of hearing people who write let alone blog and code tell me that blogspot is superior software. It isn’t. So there. lol :D
More annoying still are those who try to impress me with the fact they make money on blogspot blogs. Really? Then spend the cost of a Starbucks coffee every month on web hosting and move on up to self hosting wordpress. lol :P
It’s always great to chat with you. Take good care.
SBA
September 27, 2009
And remind me not to pick a fight with you! What was I thinking… I guess all of that writing, blogging and coding went to my head!
timethief
September 29, 2009
@SBA
I never fight with people I admire and you are at the top of that list. However, I am inclined to rib them once in awhile.
Your blog and the information you provide to other Bloggers bloggers in it are outstanding. That’s why I recommend you to every blogspot blogger, who asks me for help. :)
UneFilleAmericaine
September 28, 2009
@SBA
I did end up going self-hosted and am happy with the appearance of my blog. I still think WordPress admin interface is VASTLY easier to use than Blogger.
RoseBelle
September 26, 2009
I’m contemplating on whether to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress. The day that I was doing my research on the pros and cons of WordPress and Blogger platform, I visited many WordPress blogsites, and guess what? Two were infected by a worm. I had continuous ad popups, it was insane!! I quickly shut down my computer, did a virus scan, and then logged back on to the net to continue my blog browsing when, yes, within 10 minutes, another WordPress blogsite was infected. I shut down my computer, scanned for viruses again, and stopped going to any WordPress blogs. I later found out that the older WordPress versions are vulnerable to worms and viruses. As a matter of fact, I posted on my blog (Sept. 22 post) for any readers using WordPress to update theirs to make the web a safer place.
timethief
September 27, 2009
Bloggers who fail to update old versions are always with us. There are notices on our wordpress dashboards when new versions are available but they ignore them. How can we politely describe the IQ of anyone running wp 1.5 when the current version is 2.8.4? Mt self hosted blog remained worm free because I update when I ought to.
PearlTrader
September 26, 2009
timethief, Thank you for this wonderful comparison. I am also using Blogger, perhaps because I think it’s very easy to use. WordPress comment system is certainly impressive. Although, I have heard from many experienced bloggers that wordpress is better but I still need to learn a lot before thinking to move from blogspot to wordpress.
timethief, thank you for providing so many blogging tips even without having any interest of earning money. But you are certainly earning our respect.
Wish you all the best, timethief.
Ibn Hanif
timethief
September 27, 2009
It’s a myth that its hard to use wordpress. There’s no coding skill required at wordpress.com. It’s all point and click.
As far as self hosted wordpress see what UneFilleAmericaine said above:
I am a total novice when it comes to HTML, but after two weeks on WP, I am so inspired that I want to take a class on HTML so I can design for WordPress.
All my best to you too.
Tony Single
September 26, 2009
WordPress indeed rocks! I have to agree with you, UneFilleAmericaine… why did I wait so long to make the move from Blogger? WordPress is superior in every way, and I like the elegance of their layouts much more too. I’ve been converted (along with my blog)! :P
timethief
September 27, 2009
Yay! Another wordpress convert provides positive feedback. Thanks for commenting. :)
Hedon
September 26, 2009
We are self-hosted, but I agree with all your WP Luv.
Also, I notice that we are using the same theme although I admit that we have tweaked ours quite a bit. Still, I love Jestro and their themes and consider them a big plus, too.
timethief
September 27, 2009
This is not the same version of Vigilance that I have on my self hosted blog. This version has been adapted to run on worpdpress MU (mulituser) and lacks some of the customizable features we have on the self hosted version. However, I still like it.
D
September 26, 2009
Good information! I have been thinking about switching to WordPress. However, I am worried that my posts will not easily transfer over to that system…I will perhaps contact the technical support. Great post!
timethief
September 27, 2009
Hi D,
You can export your blogspot contents out of your blog there and import them into a wordpress blog. People do this all the time. Blogger doesn’t allow hotlinking though so if your images are on blogspot servers rather than being third party hosted then you will have to upload them again.
Brian
September 27, 2009
I started life on blogger with respect to blogs and then moved to WordPress, there is a learning curve to go through and using WordPress is not quite as easy as blogger when you first start, probably because of all the extra functionality that comes with it.That said it isn’t that hard to learn either and well worth it for the benefits you have illustrated here.
I would add that for the vast majority of people who do want an income from blogging then the own domain route is the way to go, I also happen to believe that when you put so much effort into building up your Internet presence, getting back links, page rank etc. you are adding value to the site which you can cash in on at some point if you ever want to stop or change direction, simply by selling the domain. It is surprising how quickly the value increases on an active, well written and well visited blog, although only ever worth what someone will pay for it of course.
timethief
September 29, 2009
Thanks so much for sharing your testimony with all my readers Brian. I appreciate it.
Brian
September 30, 2009
You are very welcome, I do still run some blogspot blogs without too much trouble but then I have kept them deliberately simple.
PearlTrader
September 27, 2009
timethief, thank you for providing precious blogging tips even without having any interest of earning. Atleast, you are certainly earning our respect.
Best Wishes
Ibn Hanif
timethief
September 29, 2009
You’re very welcome. :)
redfokker
September 27, 2009
Well, maybe not a total SUX … It got me started with blogging. I now am a self hosted wordpress person. Blogger was kind of repressive.
timethief
September 29, 2009
It doesn’t suck. It’s just not as good as wordpress. I just used that word in the title to stimulate discussion, and it worked … lol :D
deoangel
September 27, 2009
timethief, thanks for the info. I think that I may look into WordPress.
timethief
September 29, 2009
Best wishes D.
dreemstyletransit
September 27, 2009
WordPress all the way!
timethief
September 29, 2009
w00t! ;)
CatPurry
September 27, 2009
You have given me something to shoot for here. I am still taking baby steps, but someday I will be ready to move up and do things right. I am book marking this to read again and again until I’m ready. Thanks, pc
timethief
September 29, 2009
Once you have some basic blogging skills you can make the move if you so desire. Until then happy blogging.
shade2009
September 27, 2009
True I agree , what is driving me up the wall with bloggers now is you cant edit nor reply to comments. I have already started a wordpress blog and cant wait to get it up and running. Grt post.
timethief
September 29, 2009
I hear you. The inability to edit comments was annoying to me as well when I had a blogspot blog. There are times when readers leave a good comment but include obscenities. I don’t post obscenities so on wordpress I can delete and insert [obscenity removed by Admin] and then post the comment. On my blogspot blog all I could do was delete the entire comment. :(
lawmacs
September 27, 2009
This is so true i started a bloggers blog and it is still there i did not do much with it i use wordpress and was impress i finally get my own domain name started two blogs one with wordpress and my main blog is running blogengine.net i prefer blogengine.net for the simple fact that i am more competent editing asp.net than php long live wordpress
timethief
September 29, 2009
I’ve never tried blogengine. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Cheeringforu
September 27, 2009
true, but blogger has a larger variety of themes, and more users, which means more people to view your blog. i wish wordpress had more colorful themes. the ones they have are very kind of adult aimed, when a good amount of the users are younger, and like bright things! lol…
timethief
September 29, 2009
There are more blogspot themes available however, most do not validate. Many have as many as 300 HTML errors right out of the box. Also note that many of the free themes for blogspot blogs are actually wordpress templates that have been adapted to run on Blogger. And although there may be more Blogger bloggers I don’t see how that equates to more readers. Bloggers read blogs from all the blogging platforms so that argument is IMHO off-base. There are over 70 free wordpress.com themes to choose from and close to half of them do allow for customized headers.
pornstarbabylon
September 27, 2009
I stayed here because of Support and you’ll get an answer. Asking Blogger for help is liking screaming into the wind.
Only drawbacks like many have mentioned is not being able to have access to our templates & profit if we want to.
timethief
September 29, 2009
You’re certainly right about support and also about the two limitations. The third one is the inability to use javascript. All three disappear by purchasing a domain, downloading a free wordpress install and spending the equivalent of a Starbucks coffee once monthly on web hosting.
gentledove
September 27, 2009
blogger has more users but I get many, many times more visits at WP, blogger support is practically stitch, community almost nil. They seem to have a lot of features and yet somehow they seem to miss the mark in terms of effectiveness.
timethief
September 29, 2009
I concur. Well said.
chadoates
September 27, 2009
I agree, in my experience Blogger’s been way too tough to use … I couldn’t even look at my blog without an: “Error this page doesn’t exist” popping up.
timethief
September 29, 2009
I’m sorry your experience was such a frustrating one. What a turn-off that must be for anyone who is new to blogging.
raincoaster
September 27, 2009
Blogger may have more users, but that’s irrelevant when it comes to hits. The community features there aren’t as powerful as the Googlejuice of WP.com. My readers may not all be WP users, but I have many, MANY times more readers than I could have gotten at Blogspot.
timethief
September 29, 2009
AMEN
jj-momscashblog
September 27, 2009
In regards to the comments of the Blogger format I must admit I find it very hard to leave a comment on Blogger’s blog,and I’m glad that you saw the light and came over to the bright side. Good luck jj
timethief
September 29, 2009
I saw the light in 2006 and the weather has been fine ever since. ;)
azahar
September 29, 2009
Sooooo much more eloquent than I was about this same topic…
Too Much Is Enough Already
timethief
September 29, 2009
Thanks for posting that link. I visited, read and chuckled. I have probably lost more comments into the ether than those that actually got posted onto blogspot blogs. One of the things that drives me write up the wall is the commenting systems that do not allow copy and paste. I’m visually impaired. I frequently write comments offline and then copy paste them into comment boxes. On blogspot blogs I have found I’m unable to do this – what a PITA! However, the intense debate comment system (JS kit) seems to be working well on blogspot blogs, so that’s good news.
Tanya
September 30, 2009
WordPress just looks much more professional in the end than Blogger ever could. You can take a typical blog design and customise it into any kind of website that suits you which is brilliant! Great post.
timethief
September 30, 2009
Your site looks great. However, I do want to add that those who do know how to code can create every attractive and functional sites using Blogger software. Here us an example:
bpwebnews
Aluajala
October 2, 2009
Hi! All my blogs are currently on Blogger platform however I’m always looking for any good difference.
Wordpress seems to be a great platform which I’m going to try soon. However I have a question. You wrote that “This is not so at WordPress.com where advertising is not allowed on free hosted blogs” does this mean if I have a blog username.wordpress.com I cannot place any adsense (or whatever other) ads on it unless I purchase a domain where I’ll install WordPress engine? Or did I get smth wrong? I’ll appreciate your advice. Thank you.
timethief
October 2, 2009
If you have a free hosted wordpress.COM blog you cannot have advertising of any kind on it.
If you choose to self host and purchase your own domain, and hire a web host for it, then you can then you can download free wordpress software from wordpress.ORG and have any advertising you want on it.
Please read WordPress.COM or WordPress. ORG ? The difference in order to gain an understanding of the two very different options.
Also read: WordPress.COM versus WordPress.ORG
helmikuu
October 9, 2009
Thanks for visiting my site. Yeah I know wordpress rocks, but I still love blogger. Great post you did a very good comparison. What I don’t like about wordpress is that I need to purchase domain just to put adsense and a affiliates.
timethief
October 9, 2009
What I like about wordpress.com is that it’s not full of sploggers, spammers and click fraud artists and the reason it isn’t full of them is because advertising isn’t allowed.
ileaneb
October 11, 2009
Hi Timethief,
I agree WordPress is by far the better of the two. Ironically I established a blogspot blog just for the purpose of comparing the two platforms. I actually tried to find arguments in favor of Blogger and I haven’t found many good ones. I just keep the Blogger blog in case I want to post something fun or off topic. The only time I would recommend Blogger is if someone has a limited amount of time or they are just starting to learn how to use a computer. I had fun reading your post. Thanks!
timethief
October 12, 2009
I think Blogger is a platform for those who know how to code. For those who don’t I believe that wordpress.com is a better choice.
Rein
October 16, 2009
WordPress kicks incredible ass! :) And I believe if you know how to code, you might as well code it for wordpress since most users use it.
timethief
October 16, 2009
I agree but there are many people who began on Blogger software who do not wish to switch.
barryb64
November 26, 2009
timethief,
I have had the opportunity to use both Blogger and WordPress.com. There are definitely major differences between the two platform. I thoroughly love the administrative back end of the WP platform. It makes managing my blog, easy. Definitely appreciate the inclusion of BlogStats. Yes, I saw that you missed this little feature.
I have one minor complaint and it is the one thing I liked at Blogger. I liked the visual editor used in making minor and yet valuable changes to a template. I actually liked Benevolence. I just had a couple of tweaks I wanted to make.
Though I do have some dated knowledge of CSS, I am not fluent with it. All I wanted to do is, change the background color to better suit the photo. Change the font so it is easier to read and perhaps make the sidebar distinctive.
Actually, it would be nicer to use one of the thousands of free templates for the WordPress platform. Yeah, I know these are meant for use by those doing self hosting.
timethief
November 27, 2009
@Barry
The free wordpress themes that are coded for wordpress.ORG must be adapted in order to run on wordpress.COM software, as we run on a multi-user blogging platform.
barryb64
November 28, 2009
I take it, this is the difference between the two platform.
Well, I do take back one comment. I’d love to see more themes using the features demonstrated in Vigilance. I greatly appreciated the ability to make slight modifications to background colors, border colors and link colors. I’ve no problems with leaving the fonts in the hands of the theme.
timethief
November 28, 2009
Yes, the difference is that one provides stand alone capability and the other does not. At wordpress.com we are all on a shared multi-user blogging platform. As we share the same templates that underlay our themes we cannot individually access and edit the php and html. If we could make the edits you want then every blog with the same theme would be likewise affected by the edit.
vexxedone
December 16, 2009
I’m new to this and so far wordpress has been awesome and easy to use! Thanks for the information!
timethief
December 16, 2009
@vexxedone
I’m happy to hear you are enjoying learning how to use wordpress. :)
San
December 26, 2009
I wish I would have seen your blog and the link you sent me earlier. Then i wouldn’t have wasted my time on blogger xD
timethief
December 26, 2009
@Sanshiru
Welcome to onecoolsitebloggingtips.com … what took you so long to find it? ;)
childrensnook
July 1, 2010
I recently switched to the free wordpress with a purchased domain. Is it possible to put a code in my blog template? I right articles for pay and they need their code on my template to determine that I actually own my blog. This has been my only issue with the exception of losing my GFC followers…..otherwise I am loving wordpress.
timethief
July 2, 2010
Many of us own our domains but we use wordpress.com as a free host and we must comply with the restrictions and the TOS. This is a multiuser blogging platform. It is not like Blogger. We cannot access let alone edit the templates underlying our themes. This is because all those using the same the same theme are in essence using the same underlying template. Only Staff can access and edit those files and every edit they make effects all those using the same theme. http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/editing-themes/
In other words, wordpress.com software is not Blogger software. It’s different. It’s also different from wordpress.ORG software. See here > http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
wordpress.com does not allow duplicate content. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359
It does not allow blogs with auto-filled content. It does not allow advertising and affiliate links are stripped out by the software. Also note that wordpress.com blogs cannot be equipped for ecommerce and wordpress.com blogs cannot be used to drive traffic to third party sites therefore no retailing or reselling of the work made by others is allowed on wordpress.com blogs. http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/
The only affiliate links allowed are found in types of blogs allowed and not allowed:
“Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs and get-rich-quick schemes (“Make six figures from home!!”, “20 easy steps to top profits!!”, etc). This includes multi-level marketing (MLM) blogs and pyramid schemes. To be clear, people writing their own original book, movie or game reviews and linking them to Amazon, or people linking to their own products on Etsy do NOT fall into this category.”
http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
If you believe that your affiliate links ought to be approved then you must present them to Staff for approval. http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
Bill
July 17, 2010
I have one point of yours which I think needs a bit of an explanation. I wrote support at WP.com to ask if it was ok for me to have a sidebar image which was linked to my gallery at Zazzle where I sell stuff with my photographs on the merchandise. The reply was that not only could I do that but that I could also have an about page about the Zazzle gallery which could also contain a link to the Zazzle site. The catch seems to be that my WP.com site will have posts about the photographs and the locations in which they were taken. In other words it won’t just be a go-here-and-buy-stuff blog.
timethief
July 18, 2010
Hi Bill,
Yes a “real blog” is what they look for. Also wordpress.com does support creators (authors, artists, musicians, artisans) who wish to sell what they themselves make from their blog. But wordpress.com does NOT support reselling and retailing the work of others from your blog. I think that’s spelled out here:
http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
and here
http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/
Amanda
August 12, 2010
Great post! My own journey echoes yours, I’m using self-hosted WordPress and would never go back to the dark ages of Blogger.
However, in the niche I blog in, Blogger blogs are festering like pimply rabbits. I frequently participate in weekly memes, where you use a 3rd-party linking took (like Mr Linky) and then go on a blog tour of other people’s blogs who’ve also left links.
What I’ve noticed is that (in the world of book blogs) Blogger blogs outnumber WordPress by about 5 to 1.
Worse, leaving comments on these blogs is an absolute nightmare. I often just click away from them because I seriously can’t be bothered wasting my life negotiating the comments system.
And, and, AND! Why oh why do Blogger’s recent ‘template’ revelations make people’s blog look either like teenage girl’s MySpace pages from 2005 OR like scrapbooking projects from hell?
Has anyone else noticed this?
Ilze
September 29, 2010
What a fantastic find today after I had sleepless nights over Blogger vs WordPress. JUST started a new blog on wp and the learning curve steep for a non techie, but totally convinced now it ws right thing. But now I need to move on to the next issue – wp.com vs wp.org. The “self-hosting” part bugs me – own backups, site could shut down…etc etc. not sure what this implies for me?? Will i be able to do this? But – I saw a link in here that could help – thanks SOOOO much !!!!! Will go check it out now. TOTALLY answered my question on Blogger though.
Ilze
September 29, 2010
Ok – I read the articles on wp.com vs wp.org. Still scares me to go with an option even more techie if I am already struggling to just set up wp.com on my own here…. so I will stick with.com for how. I definitely hope to get to .org one day. Just one question – will it be foolish to carry on with .com for a year and then move over to .org – what will the implications be for my blog? Kind of silly now to think about monetizing if I have not even got followers yet – will take time….Just dont want to regret if i put this too far in future.
timethief
September 30, 2010
Hello Ilze,
Rather than doing a lot of typing I’m going to post links to related articles. My advice is to purchase a domain for your blog ASAP. The reasons why this will be to your advantage are contained in these posts:
How and why to get your own domain
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/06/26/how-and-why-to-get-your-own-domain/
Bloggers get your own domain
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/08/bloggers-get-your-own-domain/
Self hosting: What’s your hurry?
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/13/self-hosting-whats-your-hurry/
Learning how to blog on wordpress software here at wordpress.COM is IMHO a must before one moves to wordpress.ORG. Here we have excellent and easily understood documentation and a great peer support forum. If you can’t get your issue solved there you do have wordpress.com Staff who will help.
When you move to wordpress.ORG you find the codex documentation to be less user friendly as it expects that bloggers are more technically informed than many actually are. Also posting to the peer support forum there does not always bring forth answers quickly and in some cases there are no answers forthcoming at all. Lastly, there is NO wordpress.ORG Staff to turn to. In essence, when you move to wordpress.ORG you are pretty much on your own, and your blog is like a stand alone island. It’s no longer part of the wordpress.COM community and neither are you, except for the purpose of getting API keys for plugins.
nandu
October 1, 2010
Not recommend blogger to anyone they can screwed you by deleting it anytime. Instead use cheap paid hosting and upgrade later to more space or bandwith if required. In this way you can backup your blog by downloading it on your pc, weekly or monthly, its not very difficult.
And one more thing to say: Never ever buy unlimited Hosting Package, No such thing exist, that kind of package for newbies to make them fool by selling that kind of package. If you by you can never use that service, it related to technical thing. You know when your blog start to get more traffic it will use more CPU Usage and this thing is not unlimited and all web hosting company hide this from customers because non-bloggers or customers have no knowledge for this. And your account start to get suspend regularly and after few suspension they delete your account. I told this here because i found that most people not know this and lost much money for nothing.
Its not mean buying hosting package and making blog is risky. Buying costly packages initially, instead buy cheap package first and upgrade later if required. This method is good i think. Because it require 6 month or year to popular your blog. You know nothing happened instantly.
So buy your own space and domain instead using free services. if you use free services you have no control over space and domain. Provider can delete them anytime. If you buy that will be your personal property.
Thanks for Reading
timethief
October 1, 2010
Thanks for your comment. I do not recommend web hosting services simply based on them being “cheap”. I use A Small Orange. Their service is outstanding, they have great features and their support is avaliable 24/7.
http://www.asmallorange.com/hosting/shared/
nandu
October 5, 2010
Yes I agree. It not mean to say if Package is its good, I mean to say do your homework before purchasing anything anywhere.
Here i told about unlimited webhosting. Which is not good to purchase. Its useless to spend my of that kind of thing.
Unlimited means nothing if you can not use it.
Sergio Ortega
October 1, 2010
Nice post. Reminds me of the reflexion I had a couple of months ago, as I was debating whether to move my existing website to Blogger or WP.com … Three things almost made me go with Blogger: free domain name mapping, JavaScript allowed, and no advertising restrictions.
Then, I discovered their unfriendly user interface… and the fact that it only allows 10 static pages. Not to mention that ugly bar on top of the blogs and an unfriendly 404 error message (which many visitors would probably land on, due to the fact that the URLs would change)…
Thank goodness I made the right choice. I think $10 a year for domain mapping is a small price to pay for everything WP.com offers.
timethief
October 2, 2010
I agree with everything you have said. I began on Blogger but within a short time of trying WordPress.com blogging I shelved my Blogger blog. WordPress.com have many free features and a community, and as you have pointed out domain mapping is well worth $10.00 per year. Thanks for commenting. It’s good to meet you. :)
The Boo
October 26, 2010
Yay wordpress!!
Thanks for sharing this article tt. It solidifies what I already knew. I started out with both a blogger and a wordpress account and it didn’t take me long to realize that wordpress kicked blogger’s arse. :p
timethief
October 26, 2010
I also started by using Blogger and shortly thereafter I got a WordPress blog. There was no going back for me and my title says it all.
Jack Yan
January 13, 2011
Following up from what Nandu commented above, there’s one other important reason to not be on Blogger: the fact Google can delete your blog at any time.
They have bots going around deleting splogs (a good thing) but they hit false positives (a bad thing). Try getting a legit blog restored—it took me six months to help a friend do just that, using the “proper channels” at Google.
After that experience, I decided to take my blogs off Blogger in December 2009. We first went on WordPress with a work site two years before so the transition was not too tough. I’ve found the support and community amazing and WordPress is way more powerful—we’ve now even built entire sites with it, using it as a content-management system. Unlike most programs, it also seems to get better with each incarnation.
Val Erde
April 19, 2011
I had two blogger/blogspot blogs for very short periods just before coming to WordPress and I hated them more than I can express. I’ve a ‘real-life’ friend who blogs there and I know countless other people who enjoy and want to stay there, too – but it’s not for me. It’s clunky and limiting and limited. Other people seem to find blogger dashboard and controls easy, but to me they were hopeless. The technical help was not forthcoming, I really think that they just don’t care about the people who use the service.
I love WordPress (dot com, as I’m not attracted by dot org) and while it did take me quite a while to get the hang of it, now I have, I’m very happy and comfortable here. Thanks for this post TT. (I’m browsing your old posts in my feed reader so you may get some more comments from me, later!)
timethief
April 19, 2011
Hi Val,
I went through the same transition and ended up here as well. As far as I’m concerned this software, support and the fact there is a wordpress.com community made it a superior choice for me.
arrival departure
June 3, 2011
Thanks for sharing this article tt. It solidifies what I already knew.
timethief
June 3, 2011
Hello there,
Best wishes with your blogging.
signaturealamode
October 5, 2011
very good points. thanks. I am liking WordPress more and more each day. I noticed that your blog site has a different name than your “timethief” name, which is great by the way. Where do I change mine. It would be a good idea if I have more than one blog. I don’t want to write about fashion all the time. Great site. I’ll follow.
timethief
October 5, 2011
Hello there,
It’s actually best for your username, blog title and blog URL to all be the same. That way it’s easy for readers to remember and locate you. I wish mine were but they aren’t and it’s a long and boring story to explain why is that I don’t want to get into.
You can change to using either a nickname ie. display name, or you can change your username i you wish > see here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/change-your-username/
Note that when we register a username we provide an email address which becomes our unique identifier at WordPress.com. When we are logged in under that username every blog we register will be registered under that same username. To separate blogs and identities completely we can register another username with a different email address and register a different blog under the second username.