Hello, readers. You may have noticed something different. It could be the design of my blog, or maybe it’s the URL. In any case, I have made the move over to WordPress from Blogger. As such, this is the first “brand new” blog post – the rest have been imported from Blogger. (I still need to tidy up a few of them.)
Back when I started my blog, I had in fact looked at comparisons of WordPress and Blogger and I ultimately chose to use Blogger. I can’t remember exactly why, but it may have been because of my familiarity with Google products and services and its supposed simplicity for those who are new to blogging. It may also have been in part because I thought WordPress was too mainstream. But the important thing was that Blogger would fulfil my requirements, which it did.
So, why I have I suddenly changed across? Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the primary reason was because of how impressive my friend’s blog looked compared to my Blogger one. But at the same time, it has always been at the back of my mind. In order, these were my concerns with Blogger:
- Support – How long will Blogger be supported for? Google has certainly closed some of its services in the past, and there’s no guarantee that Blogger will stay around forever.
- Flexibility – Granted, I hadn’t had much experience with WordPress, but there were some things that Blogger couldn’t do. One of these is provide a contact form within a page, or allow myself or my subscribers to set how frequently new post emails are received.
- Design – I have actually found so far that Blogger is more flexible than WordPress when it comes to refining built-in designs. However, Blogger’s designs are not as attractive as WordPress’, even if they are perhaps more functional with regards to layout. (Blogger lets you have a sidebar on either or both sides, as well as a top widget and footer widgets.)
I will miss my Blogger blog, but design has a great influence on people. Though not necessarily a bad thing in terms of function and readability, Blogger looks more early 2000s. Granted, Blogger does have a fairly recent selection of “modern” themes, but unfortunately I couldn’t get them to work well with the widgets I wanted.
But (so far, at least) I am happy with my move to WordPress. Here are a few things that I’ve found nice about WordPress:
- Categories – Rather than just “labels”, I can categorise and sub-categorise my blog posts and then use tags as more specific indicators. Furthermore, I can edit tags and categories without having to go through every single post.
- Email Updates – My blog subscribers are able to set how frequently – immediately, daily or weekly – they wish to receive email notifications of new posts.
- Options – I’m a sucker for settings. I love settings and customisation. So, I like the way I can choose when a widget appears on my blog.
So, there you have it. While I still think Blogger is a great blogging platform, I feel that WordPress suits my needs better.
Though there is one thing that perhaps gets at me a bit, and that’s the readability of WordPress. I feel like my old blog, maybe due to its posts being contained within a shape and being centred on the screen, is more readable, in the sense that it is easier to stay focused on the post’s content. What do you think?
~Linguistic Programmer
The Linguistic Programmer 