• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Margie ClaymanMargie Clayman

Marietta, OH

  • About Me
  • Marketing
  • Librarianship
  • Random Musings
  • Contact Me

Blogger versus WordPress

September 19, 2010 by Margie Clayman Leave a Comment

Categorize under, “Things I wish I would have known six months ago.”

I am in a bit of a pickle. You see, for a long time, up to about a month ago I guess, I was a staunch defender of Blogger. And really, I’m not going to start bad-mouthing it now. I think if you are blogging for fun, there are still a lot of features Blogger offers that are really nifty, including the draft.blogger customized backgrounds that I took advantage of. However, there are a few things I have noticed since coming on over to WordPress, and I thought it only fair to share my experience.

Design

I would say the design features in terms of aesthetics are about the same. However, while Blogger has some very pretty designs, WordPress seems more interested in functionality. Designs are divided more based on number of columns or customizable headers more than “animals,” “food” etc.

Extras (Widgets)

Blogger offers a lot of widgets, but some of them kind of make me scratch my head. One nice thing about Blogger that I never took advantage of was the Google Reader feature (Blogger is owned by Google). However, I started noticing that blogging experts like Mack Collier were talking about the value of having “5 most popular posts” easily accessible. That’s something you can’t do in Blogger so far as I know, but WordPress makes it easy. I also enjoy the WordPress categorization capabilities.

Sharing

My friend Lisa asked me why I made the move to WordPress after so much agonizing. I told her, “Well, Stan over at PushingSocial said, “Darn it Margie, switch over to WordPress. It’s a pain in the butt to share your posts from Blogger.” As it happens, Blogger does not offer a URL shortener, so you are making people work if they want to share your post. I have two different ways to share my posts (hint hint) over here, including a brand new Twitter button that WordPress launched shortly before my arrival (thank you for the welcome!).

Analytics

This is the real clincher. I was living and dying by my Google Analytics reports for awhile. And that in itself is worth mentioning. Blogger does not have an installed analytics system in place. You have to get your own Analytics code and place it in the blog code. Not impossible, but kind of tricky. Anyway, the numbers were driving me nuts. My report would say that I had 0 visitors on days when I would get the most comments. The more compliments I got, the more my  bounce rate went up. When my bounce rate would go down, the time spent on the site would decrease to under a minute.

None of these problems plague me here in WordPress. You get a blog trackers automatically when you sign up for a WordPress blog, which is nice. Now, being a skeptic, I’m not 100% sure the numbers I get here on WordPress can be trusted either. However, the numbers are much more shiny than they were over in my Blogger world. So sue me, I like positive feedback.

If I wasn’t doing my Social Media work here, I probably would have stayed on Blogger. It really is quite serviceable and there’s a lot to like. However, if you are just getting started, I have to recommend WordPress over Blogger. It just might save you some heartache.

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Post: « What is #30Thursday?
Next Post: A new generation of Tweeters and the new Twitter game »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Seeing Double: African American Literature
  • Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Book Review: Land of Lincoln, by Andrew Ferguson
  • The portrayal of the infertile woman in entertainment
  • Chapter 3: A Weird Thing Happened Today

Recent Comments

  • Delores Baskerville on Are you locking out blog subscribers?
  • frank c tripoli on Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Lyv on #30Thursday number 10 (we’re in the double digits?!?)
  • Fitoru on New Recipes, 2013
  • Anna Wyatt on Help me petition to deactivate driver-side airbags for Little People

Archives

  • February 2021
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2017
  • October 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2007
  • April 2007

Categories

  • Book Reviews
  • Crafts and Charity
  • Gardening for Renters
  • Marketing Talk
  • Molly Maggie McGuire
  • Musings
  • PassionPlayers
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Footer

marjorie.clayman@gmail.com

   

Margie Clayman © 2022