In my tutorial on Social Networking, I recommended that anyone using Blogger.com should switch to WordPress. This came from my own personal experience, having started on Blogger.com myself, and later moving to a WordPress blog. I was asked to clarify this point:
Nic asked:
Hi Lynn, I have a blogger blog published on my own domain and server. What do you mean by missing out on TONS of "perks" to blogging?
Using your own Domain Name is a smart move. If you blog on a free hosted blog platform such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com, they will give you a subdomain such as clicknewz.blogspot.com. Even if you DO use Blogger, at least all of your hard work will benefit a domain that you can later point somewhere else if you choose.
For example you are building incoming links, PageRank, listings in the major search engines, etc. For less than $10/year, those 'assets' belong to you and you dont risk losing them and starting back at square one if you decide to move your blog later.
That point aside, here are 7 reasons why I would recommend WordPress on your own server or hosting account over Blogger.com or any other hosted solution...
7 Reasons to Choose WordPress for Your Blog
- Categories
With WordPress you have the option to create categories and organize your content by sub-topics. This creates cross-links to related content which interests readers, and also sets up good internal linking. - Timestamps
Wordpress allows you to post-date an entry for future auto-publishing. With this feature you can write posts ahead of time and your blog will continually update even if you are away. - WordPress Dashboard
At a glance you can manage your blog from this one screen with news of the latest updates, your most recent comments, the most recent inbound links, blog stats, etc. If someone linked to your blog 5 minutes ago, you'll know about it. - Social Networking
The minute someone links to your WordPress blog - you know about it. You'll know who links to you, talks about you, blogrolls you or refers to one of your blog posts. This makes it easy to network and stay on top of current discussions. - Plugins
Since WordPress is so popular, there is no end to the plugins and widgets that are available - all for free. It is simply one of the most widely supported blog platforms so you can easily find free themes, free code, free plugins, etc. - Full Statistics
If you are hosting your WordPress blog on almost any shared hosting plan, a full site stats package comes with your hosting account. You will know exactly how many unique visitors you get each month, where your traffic is coming from, and how well you are doing in the major search engines. - Full Control
You never have to worry that Blogger.com is going to delete your blog from their system. They even deleted their own blog once...
Next:
- Checklist: How to Start a WordPress Blog
- 31 Days to Build A Better Blog highly recommended
Best,
About Lynn Terry
Good stuff Lynn. I was thinking about reopening a blogger account but not being allowed to timestamp was a pain. I do host my own wordpress blog but figured I'd also get one up and running on the .com site. Is that a good idea?
I'd like to get your opinion on WordPress v. Movable Type. I currently run my blog using Blogger and plan to move to WordPress, for the reasons you outlined so clearly above. I've had others suggest Movable Type because, as a paid service, it is less likely to have problems with spam in comments. My primary concern is the ability to customize the look easily and to use the blog as my entire new website, rather than have a website with a blog attached. Any advice?
Hi Daryl,
> I do host my own wordpress blog but figured I’d also get one up and running on the .com site. Is that a good idea?
It depends on what the purpose is for the second blog. I left my original blog up on Blogger.com simply because there were a lot of pages/posts indexed and I didnt want to just delete it - but redirect the traffic here instead.
When I start other niche blogs, I use WordPress as well. I dont see any point in using the hosted services at this point...
Hi Collin,
> I’ve had others suggest Movable Type because, as a paid service, it is less likely to have problems with spam in comments.
I'm not sure if this is true or not... but I use Akismet with my WordPress blogs and it serves as a GREAT spam filter. It's free and so I would recommend it as part of any WordPress setup.
> My primary concern is the ability to customize the look easily and to use the blog as my entire new website, rather than have a website with a blog attached. Any advice?
You'll find a lot of support for WordPress online, so this shouldnt be a problem. Here's an example too, of someone that has done this: http://alexking.org/blog/2005/03/22/wordpress-as-cms/
Teli Adlam is who I turn to for WP Design & CSS questions. Definitely subscribe to her blog at http://www.optiniche.com/blog/ and check out this post: Building Affiliate Sites With WordPress.
Hi Lynn
Thank you for the detailed clarification.
I'm planning to move my blog from blogger to wordpress. As I have links to various blogger blog posts in my emails to my list, I'll have to change each and every one of them. Is there a more efficient way of doing this? How do you redirect traffic?
Nice article, I've also used blogger but its no way near wordpress. blogger sucks
Hi Nic,
You're welcome - thanks for leaving the comment that lead to this article!
I chose not to transfer all of my blogger posts to my new WordPress blog when I made the switch, but instead picked up at WP where I left on on Blogger.
Like you, I had links out there - and some ranking very nicely in Google - and I didnt want to mess with that. You can read the steps that I took in this blog post:
Moving from Blogger to WordPress
What I did is update my feed links to point to the new WP feed, so anyone who subscribed at the old blog would actually be subscribed to the new (current) blog.
Check out that post (at the link I gave) and let me know if that helps...
Best,
Lynn Terry
Lynn, I found you through a google search, I've been playing around with switching to WordPress. Here are my questions.. blogspot points to my own domain right now, but it is still hosted over at blogspot. You think I should host it myself? WordPress at first glance says you can't use advertising on your blog site. True? I link to amazon, which I don't really care about, except for my own book, which I'd like to link to.
Next question. I was being indexed by google and they dropped me. Totally, so I've been thinking of changing anyway, and moving since I have to start again.
I do like the import feature. Thanks for the blog
I made the switch from blogger to wordpress, and I am SO glad I did. The above reasons you gave were dead on.
I especially like the timestamp feature, being able to postdate. This enables me to put content out on a daily basis without me having to log in/update this particular blog every day. Super nifty! 🙂
Hi Michellev,
I think you are looking at WordPress.com, which is a hosted solution. What you want to do is get a hosting account and install the free version of WordPress on your own account (using your own domain name too, of course).
Hosting is less than $10/month, and I recommend HostGator. That is where this blog (clicknewz.com) is hosted. Once you set up an account, you can use the one-click install through your cPanel to install WordPress. It's super easy.
When you do that, you can put anything you want on your blog - advertising or otherwise. You are in complete control.
If you arent worried about rankings or losing traffic at the old blog, etc, importing your current content and starting over on the new domain/platform is a fine idea. I had good rankings and a decent number of readers, so I chose to leave my original blog in place and pick up where I left off on the new blog.
You can read more about my decision on that in this post:
http://www.clicknewz.com/15/blogger-to-wordpress/
Best,
Lynn Terry
Hey Lynn - great article. I also use wordpress for my two blogs. I also had one of them hosted on Blogger a few years back; and wordpress was just easier to customize from a creative perspective.
Hey Lynn,
I'm going to try and recall my original comment. Please forgive me if I accidentally leave something out. 🙂
------------------------------------
This is a great topic, Lynn. I guess I should thank Nice for bringing it up for discussion. 😀
I'd like to add, as a benefit for WordPress, that it's open source, which means that you can tweak the code until your heart is content. This may seem like a benefit for the geeks, but the everyman can make some good use of it as well.
Collin, I believe you may be thinking of TypePad, which is the paid service. Movable Type does have a variety of commercial licenses available, however, there is a free personal license and anyone with a desire can download/install the software.
Whether or not it's better regarding spam because it's a paid service is a fallacy. The reason so many people jumped ship is because of the spam problem with MT; it may have cleared up, but one can't be certain without actually using it.
Plus, MT is not as easy to set up and install as WordPress which means you could spend quite a few hours trying to wrap your head around it.
Of course, if you're truly curious, then you can always download the personal license and test it out for yourself. 🙂
~ Teli
Thank you for reposting the comment, Teli - I did find it in my spam filter that time around. I appreciate you taking the time to add your insight on the topic!
Another benefit of wordpress is that all the smart tech-heads use it. If you want to hire someone to make a special format change on your blog, it's easy to find a free lancer who knows the system.
I don't think any tekkies use blogger
Excellent point 😉
Lynn - I made the jump, I figured out what you were saying, I've got most of it figured out. I am SO HAPPY! YEA.
.l. It wasn't quite as seamless as I had hoped, but I have managed to install extra plug in and widgets so in a few more weeks I'm sure I'll get it down.
Thanks for a great blog and advice.
You are most welcome - glad this was helpful for you! If you run into anything along the way, feel free to use the Blogging Forum at SSWT. You can register free at the forum and then check out the blogging section: http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/
~ Lynn
Here is a full comparison of Blogger and WordPress for those who wish to take an informed decision :
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/05/ultimate-blogger-wordpress-comparison.html
Regards
Thank you, Vin. Your comparison is different in that it is blogger.com vs wordpress.com (both free, hosted solutions). The WordPress that I am referring to here is the version that you install on your own hosting account.
Nice Post.
I also use wordpress for my blog. WordPress is easier to customize and optimize site than blogger.
Hi Lynn.
Great post...
Have you set up 'wordpress mu' for multiple blogs?
Any suggestions on this approach?
I'm researching as much as possible before jumping into blogging... I expect to have 4-5 niche blogs in the next couple years.
I havent, but I am following along with a friend who is doing this and look forward to seeing how it works out for him. Hopefully he'll blog about it in the near future and we can gain some insight from his experience 😉
I've heard good things about MU!
I haven't try blogger but heared so many things about it.
Im using wordpress right now, since this is one of the most popular blogging tool around and so far, im satisfied with it.
And there is no way im going to shift to blogger.
I'm using blogger right now but it has it's limits and Google sure hasn't made it any easier. I'm thinking of shifting to wordpress at some time in the future as I've heard it has more bells and whistles.
Thank you very much. That was very helpful. I've been learning alot about blogging over the last few days and this has helped me alot.
I agree with the recommendation to move to WordPress. I also started on Blogger, but moved to WordPress a couple months later. I like Blogger, but wanted to host on my own domain and needed some of the features offered by WordPress.
I just wrote about an experiment I conducted to see if a new blog could be launched in less than 15 minutes on either Blogger or WordPress.com. You can read about it at http://bloggingstartup.com. Look for the January 25, 2008 post.
All good points! What do you think though, for someone like me who HAS had the blog on Blogspot for several years. I don't want to just throw away everything I've built up. I can easily get a domain name for the blogspot blog and forward it to it...I love how your blog looks though, and I made some changes today that I think will give it a little more usability. It doesn't look like a Blogspot template at all, it matches my website. I would love to hear what you think.
Hi Darla,
When I made the switch from blogger to wordpress, I left my blog at blogger.com and started fresh on the wordpress blog. I blogged about making the move, and I ocassionally updated the blogger blog with links to the new blog. I did that because I didnt want to lose rankings the original blog had. Might be an idea for you too 😉
I have a blogger blog that I don't use as I moved to having WP on my own hosting platform a while ago.
You say that "I didnt want to just delete it - but redirect the traffic here instead."
I didn't know that you could re-direct from blogger. Can you tell me how to do that?
Liz
how can i re-direct from blogger?I would love to hear from you.
Good question!
Here's what I did: I left my blog at blogger.com just as it was. I added posts there as I was making the transition, letting my readers know that I was moving to clicknewz.com and to come there and read the posts.
I then updated the blogger blog once a week with links to the new blog, for anyone that happened by.
Then I updated all the links in the sidebar and navigation to reflect the new links (on my domain) and the new RSS Feed links. So if someone subscribed by email or RSS at my old blog - it would actually subscribe them to my new blog.
Hope that helps 😉
Thanks for your comparison.
But I had chosen Blogger b4 I saw this article:(
I started on blogger as well, just over 5 years ago, and switched to WordPress too. It's never too late to make the switch, so no worries.
great post. I'm already planning to switch from WP.com to WP.org with self-hosted. But, question is, how is it $10/year?
"Less than $10/year" is referring to the price of your own domain name.
For hosting, many of us use HostGator - and I have a coupon code and a checklist at: http://www.clicknewz.com/1872/how-to-start-a-wordpress-blog/
I have several blogs setup using WordPress self hosted and also some blogger blogs as well as wordpress.com blogs. The setup up is done strategically.
Self hosted wordpress is the way to go for your main sites. Recently I decided to setup non profit site for my cell group. While wordpress.com is still better, blogger has it plus albeit small ones.
Easier to embed videos & google docs. Maybe I did not figure out how to do it in wordpress.com yet but it wa much easier on blogger.
Having wrote all that, I was really surprised when Lynn mentioned Google deleted their own blog. Ha Ha. Joke of the day at the time I'm sure. Big G is not infallible after all
I have started doing a good sum of preliminary research on direct target marketing for a brand-new page that i will be focusing on and undoubtedly felt like stating that you blog is very sound. Many thanks for the insightful tips you have constructed.
Hi Lynn,
I am planning to start my own blog soon and I am looking at both WordPress and TypePad, the 2nd one would cost me a bit more but I feel it would give me more flexibility. Am I wrong? At this stage, it would be of a great help for me to know what you think about TypePad. Thanks 🙂