All Things Jennifer

Future Posting Now Live On Google’s Blogger

I gotta be honest, this was one of the features that I loved the MOST about WordPress when I switched over from Blogger. My sister-in-law asked me what I thought the pros and cons were for each recently and the more I wrote the more I thought, gee I kinda miss Blogger. The last time I used Blogger they didn’t have all the features they have now so when I moved WordPress was MUCH better. Now? I’m not sure. Anyhow, this is part of what I wrote explaining what I liked/didn’t like etc.

What I MISS about Blogger that I wish I could do on WordPress.

1. I wish I could add whatever I wanted to my sidebar. The sidebars on WordPress have widgets which allow you to have RSS feeds and links BUT NOT ANYTHING FLASH animated, so the Flickr badge doesn’t work, or Twitter or WISTS or Goodreads and I REALLY miss having control over that.

2. I could tweak the template coding in Blogger, self-taught and I could change my page with unlimited options and designs as often as I liked… not possible in WordPress. WordPress gives you the options and you can maybe change the header and add pictures, but you pretty much are stuck with what they give you. (As far as I can tell.)

3. I also wish WordPress had the feature that Blogger does that allows you to subscribe to comments on a blog, much easier to keep up with. Blogger did not have that option when I blogged there, but oh how nice it would be.

THAT SAID, obviously, these things aren’t that bad or I would have switched back!

Things I do not miss about Blogger that I love about WordPress.

1. At the time Blogger was often unavailable *down for repairs* or lost posts too often for my liking actually. I’m not sure how often that happens anymore, but I don’t think it’s happened on WordPress, yet.

2. I think WordPress in general has a much easier posting system. To post photos wherever you are in the post you can just click on the picture icon in the menu bar and WALLA! AND post ass many as you want in each post. I think you can still code photos in Blogger though in oreder to get around that only 3 photos per post rule…so this point might be moot.

3. WordPress also brings in a built in community that you don’t find in Blogger (or didn’t used to find.) As soon as you post in a category, your post comes up on a WordPress category page, so if you have something tagged/labeled “cooking” the post will show up over there for a while, which gives more people the chance to find you.

4. I also LOVE the stats built in at WordPress they give them to you automatically, no additional add ons (not that I could figure out how to code them on the sidebar if I wanted to or was allowed anyhow.) You can see who’s linking to you, what people are clicking on from your blog, how many people are viewing each post and what searches led to your blog. Love it.

5. I like the page break option too, not sure if Blogger does this.

6. You can also password protect posts (which I think you now can do on Blogger but before you couldn’t.)

7. Importing old posts to WordPress is quite easy too. I found because I had so much content, I needed to import the material a few times to get it all, and then some of it was double posted, but I also have 3,500 posts. I don’t think Blogger would let me move my content back over if I tried.

So readers? What platform are you currently using and why? Have things changed from Blogger that I have misinformation about above? Please let me know. Either way you choose and the choices are many…happy blogging!