There’s a war in the blogosphere, which has nothing to do with bloggers dissing each other on their websites. The battle is about control of the blogosphere by several great, many good, and tons of terrible blogging platforms. The average newbie now has “too many” options and the battle for blogging supremacy is hotter than ever.
On my website and blogs, I’m always asked, “Is WordPress better than Blogger?” The answer, of course, is “Yes.” But to understand why, it’s important to compare both blogging platforms side-by-side and see which one you need.
For Part 1 of this article, we look only at the self-hosted version of WordPress. You also need to understand that there are different versions of WordPress, the earliest now termed “WordPress” at WordPress.org, and the hosted version similar to Blogger, now termed “WordPress.com,” which is, of course, available at WordPress.com. Here’s the comparison scale:
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1) Ease of Set-up And Use
It’s much easier to set up a blog with Blogspot.com and get your own Blogger account. You can be done in 10 minutes flat. Once you’re set up, you can start posting immediately. If you want to add a designer’s touch to your blog, tons of Blogger templates are free.
Installing WordPress, however, can be a major headache if you don’t know what you’re doing. Since you’ll host it on your account, you must download the installation files, upload them to your server, set up a database, and run the configuration script.
There are many different hosting plans, so get one that fits your needs. However, if you know which hosting account to get, you can choose one with Cpanel included. With Cpanel, you can install, upgrade, and remove your WordPress platform with one click.
2) Customization & Advanced Use
Blogger doesn’t allow categories. You can’t sort your articles into different focuses unless you know how to hack the platform. With WordPress, not only can you add categories, but you can also display each category differently on your main page. In fact, with the correct plugins, you can even turn your WordPress into a magazine-like portal.
Publishing with Blogger can be a pain in the ass. It can take forever to post articles, especially if you’re making changes to the entire website. With WordPress, publishing is much faster, although it can be just as frustrating if you load your system with bells and whistles.
With a Blogger account, you can get additional features like “Shout Boxes” that improve site interaction. You can also get pretty themes and nifty tools to add to the core template files. However, that’s as far as you can go with Blogger.
With WordPress, however, the sky is the limit. As cliche as that may sound, you can get themes, additional “plugins,” and advanced tools and extend WordPress far beyond being a blogging platform.
Today’s topic is using WordPress as a complete, user-friendly Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is user-friendly, unlike complicated predecessors like PHPPostNuke, B2, Mambo, or even Joomla. Plus, the availability of source codes in this open-source system and a strong community makes it possible to use WordPress as an article management system, classifieds system, direct-selling site, and even a paid membership site.
4) Copyrights and Ownership of Content
I started with Blogger, and I won’t say it isn’t good. But after a while, I began to get frustrated with Blogger, and here’s why: Google Owns Your Content.
Google can shut down your account without warning if they don’t like what you’re blogging about. You don’t have absolute control over your blog. With WordPress, you own the domain name, and the blog is hosted on your account. You have full control over your content.
With the self-hosted version of WordPress (not WordPress.com), you can write about anything and use the software however you want. Yes, Blogger allows you to publish to your domain, but they still own the database that holds your content! Don’t forget that!
5) Search Engine Optimization and Traffic
There’s this propaganda that since Google owns Blogger, they tend to favor Blogger accounts. I won’t say this is illogical, but from my experience, there’s no such favoritism.
I’ve heard many stories from WordPress and Blogger users about getting indexed fast and ranking high in search engines. As long as the content is good, the spiders will come.
When you post on Blogger, you can only “ping” a limited number of sites, whereas, with WordPress on your domain, you can ping as many blog directories as you want and start getting more traffic.
In conclusion, I would say that WordPress is only slightly ahead in terms of optimization for search engines and building large amounts of traffic.
6) Money-Making Potential
It’s easier to get started with Google AdSense if you have a Blogger account. In fact, you can now apply for AdSense from within a Blogger account. This is not entirely surprising because the same company owns both.
With WordPress, it can get tricky. The default installation is not enough. You’ll need a couple of plugins and a better theme to maximize the AdSense potential. However, this seems to be getting easier. There are even “Adsense revenue sharing” plugins around that allow you to share ad revenue with other contributors and writers for your blog.
You’ll soon discover what I mean when you start using WordPress to build your AdSense websites. I can tell you one thing, though – once you go WordPress, you don’t go back. You need to experience it for yourself.