A TALE OF TWO GIANTS: a simple guide to choosing the right blogging platform
I have been a blogger for less than a year and a religious blogger for less than that. I have also shuttled back and forth between two popular blogging platforms, Wordpress and Blogger, in my quest for blogging greatness.
I claim to be no master in the world of blogging, or the blogosphere I should say, much less in the whole of digiworld. My little knowledge of technical jargon is limited to very basic stuff like KB, MB, GB, MP, and RAM. Other than these, my head spins and blood gushes out of my nose.
So me attempting to give a review of Wordpress vis a vis Blogger is nothing short of a little girl comparing her two favorite dolls based not on very techinical stuff but from very own experience. I hope this simple guide helps non-techies like myself choose which platform works better for them. This guide will be limited to Blogger and Wordpress as they are the only ones I'm familiar with.
NUMBER 1 GOAL-SETTING
Are you blogging simply to enjoy yourself, share your views and establish new relationships? Or are you blogging to earn a few bucks?
Wordpress allows you to blog for free, however, this limits your options of placing ads or selling ad space. You can also opt to self-host your Wordpress in other sites offering web-hosting, which allows you to earn some money from your blog by placing ads.
Blogger on the other hand is a free blogging tool which already allows its subscribers to tweak their templates and place ads.
NUMBER 2 YOUR NET-SAVVINESS
Do you understand how your templates work? Do you know how to tweak your html without disrupting the whole template? If you do, then tweaking Wordpress templates for blogs that are slef-hosted or are subscriber to wordpress itself will be a walk in the park. If not, you're better of with Blogger which allows "push-button publishing". You can just add the html/javascript in "Add gadget" and you're done.
NUMBER 3 USER-FRIENDLINESS
For easy navigation, Wordpress win hands down. You can access everything from your dashboard without changing windows or pages.
Whereas in Blogger, navigation takes awhile which can be quite confusing. From your dashboard, you can see your blogs however adding a new post takes two to three more pages. There are also links that would actually take you away from your current page and into another Google-related site.
NUMBER 4 EXPOSURE
The thing that I love most about Wordpress is how it drives traffic into your blog. Once you publish your blog, it appears in the global dashboard as one of the new entries, thereby giving you free exposure and encouraging fellow Wordpress bloggers to visit your site. If your blog pulls in quite a number of traffic, Wordpress rewards you by being on the TOP BLOGS list, again ensuring maximum exposure to the Wordpress community.
For Blogger, however, you are pretty much on your own.
But if you would choose not to show your blog to anyone at all, but platforms offer the choice not to make it available to anyone else except yourself. After all, a weblog started as simple diary entries before transforming into the entire blogosphere.
NUMBER 5 CSS TEMPLATE VERSATILITY
For sure template versatility comes with a price in Wordpress, it's either you host your blog somewhere else or you pay the fee to allow you to edit your template if you want to add a plug-in or a widget. For a personal blog that is not designed to earn some cash, the basic Wordpress templates would suffice. But for others who would want to add more personality and spice to their blogs, it would be best to sign-up up with Blogger.
For me, I have decided to stick it out with Blogger now that I have built-up my blog's reputation. I have also decided to make my blog earn and pay a few bills for me, and Blogger is letting me do that for free. I still maintain my Wordpress blog though for networking and exposure purposes.
Earning from blogging isn't as easy as some make it out to be. And it all starts from one decision, which platform would be best suit your needs. After this is made, the harder part begins, blogging.
Have a happy blog life!
