I’ve been using both Blogger and Wordpress for the past few weeks in my preparation for abandoning Wordpress ‘cause it done me wrong. I’m sorta over my snit now and more interested in assessing the differences between these two very popular blog hosting sites. I’m sure you’re all lying awake at night wondering, “Which blogging platform is Michael going to chose?” so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.
But first, an assessment: choices, as we know, are not always based on logic, but deciding which of two options is best for your needs is simply a matter of critical comparison. So which do I think is better? Wordpress. Hands down.
I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, but this overview screen sets the tone and I think you’ll agree the Wordpress screen looks more polished and professional. That theme is carried on through the two systems.
Here’s my side-by-side comparison:
| Feature | Wordpress | Blogger | Winner |
| Hidden Costs | Wordpress always has its hand out; if you want to do it, Wordpress will charge you for it. | Has none. | Blogger |
| Posting | Can copy and paste from Word with no issues. The post’s HTML can be tinkered with easily. | Copy and Paste from Word causes issues and the HTML is rendered unintelligible. | Wordpress |
| Pages | Can easily create and manipulate. | Can easily create; manipulating them is also easy but the means to do it was well-hidden. | Wordpress |
| Menus | Multiple menus with multiple levels, easily maintained. | Just a list of your pages, single level. | Wordpress |
| HTML | Does not allow you to tinker with HTML or CSS without a fee | Can do as you please for free. | Blogger |
| Configuration | If you want to configure your blog beyond the basics, it will cost you. | Easily and completely configurable. No Fee. | Blogger |
| General Look and Feel | I like WP’s smooth look and ease of access to stats and other features; the dashboard is sleek and user friendly. | I like Blogger’s stats for some things, WPs for another; the Blogger Dashboard is clunky but easy to manage. | This is a personal choice; I like some things in WP more and other things in Blogger more. It’s a toss up. |
| Inexplicably alters the look of your blog without telling you and without providing the option of changing it back | Did it once; that was enough. | Never, so far, but I have been warned by others that I cannot always count on this. | Blogger, for now, until they piss me off. |
(Incidentally, above is how Blogger handles tables.)
So which one am I going to chose? Neither, or more specifically, both.
Once the work of equalizing all the blogs was done (which, as I have mentioned before, was actually fairly quick and simple—something that might interest those of you wishing you hadn’t sold your soul to Wordpress, or Blogger) I found myself with two fully functioning yet separate blog empires (sort of like Bizarro World in the Superman comics).
My hit stats in the Blogger Universe quickly outstripped those in the Wordpress World but I still had a dedicated band of followers who remained behind (and, in some cases, probably were not even aware of the existence of the Blogger universe). If I shut down one world I would inevitably cut off some followers, as I found to my dismay when I first switched to Wordpress.
After a few attempts, I found dual updating to be a simple exercise that took only an extra minute or two. So I decided a decision wasn’t necessary; I would simply keep both blogspheres going.
In a way, it is to my advantage: because of the idiosyncrasies of Blogger, the manipulations I had to go through to update a post were, initially, taking an inordinate amount of time. The method I settled on, and which takes seconds instead of a quarter of an hour, is this: I copy and paste the completed post from Word into Worpress and insert any media. Job done. Then I copy and paste the Wordpress post into Blogger—photos and all. Job done. It works a treat, but it is a bit ironic that I need Wordpress to make Blogger posting simple.
Also Ironic is, now that the brouhaha is over, I find I sorta like the infinite scrolling, and am thinking about activating it on my blogs.
Go figure.
