Arachne Jericho › Likes

I've been with Blogger for over 3 years now. They've made some nice changes over the years. I've become more adept at modifying my own templates but would still like a bit more flexibility. It can be fun to experiment on your template but be sure to back it up before you mess with it! - Chipper Dave

Blogger has improved a lot over the years but most people use WP because of the extra flexibility and control that it gives them - ie, What Alex said! - Darren Rowse

I agree with Chipper, definitely back up your templates otherwise you are asking to encounter problems! - Joe Dawson

I do not know how is Blogger, but with WP I hack it! I go into the code, and do what I want with it. - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

With my Blogger Blog I just downloaded an .xml file from a site, the only mod I have done is add Disqus which isn't exactly big. I want to add in FriendFeed comments like in WP but it's not a massive must as it's not like I generate a huge amount of traffic! - Joe Dawson

I used Blogger awhile ago, but switched over to WP to get the power of e-mail subscription comments and scheduled posting. Now that Blogger has that, I don't know if there is a reason to change over. There is definitely more hype over WP since it had all those features first and its open source results in loads more plug-ins and enhancements than Blogger. - Dave Konig

I've moved from Blogger to Blogware to WP. I like WP because it seems to be the best supported and most flexible platform out there. Of course since I also know lots of folks there, and use it all the time, I'm just a wee biased. I've used it for straight blogs and as a CMS for "regular" websites, both with great success. - Tris Hussey

I use blogs with both Blogger and WordPress back-ends. I think WordPress is much better if you want something hackable. If you just want it to work with minimal configuration and don't need to heavily customize the site, Blogger is good. (I have seen customized Blogger blogs used by companies, but IMHO the template markup is more difficult.) At some point I will probably switch all my... more... - Voyagerfan5761

Isn't the big difference that you can't google ad sense on the free version of WP? - Daltonsbriefs

My blog is 2 months old and I use TypePad. I have found this really easy to setup and use. They have over 50 templates that you can customize, add widgets to, and it seems to have some really good security options. I had a web designer create a banner for my page. check out http://www.innovationreactor.com - Michael West

I don't know what is it about WP, but it is very difficult for me to use. I like Blogger and Typepad. - Jennifer James

You have to be really willing to deal with the nitty gritty of the tech details of coding to get full bang with WordPress. While I'd love to do that, I just don't have the time or knowledge to manage it. I have been on Typepad for several years and just started a couple of new sites on Blogger with custom templates because they give me more flexibility and features I wanted than Typepad's paid service. - Nancy Nally

Nancy, that's why plugins and widgets are for; and with the latest 2.5(.1) of WP you don't even have to worry about updating. Further more, if you find a nice WP theme (free or premium) you can get it customized just about any way you want for a few bucks, depending on who's services you get. Most probably 95% of WordPress users know nothing to a little of PHP and get by with no trouble. - Alex Cristache

WP is dead-simple to start up, and there's a gazillion plugins for it, but I don't necessarily believe it's the *best* choice. Some things are ugly under the hood, and many of the plugins people talk about are of dubious code quality (in my opinion). I, have used WP and like it, but keep in mind that it's a large hacking target. I don't have a lot of feedback on Blogger, however. - John Frenette from twhirl

Thanks for all the help. WP sounds nice, but I think I'll stick with Blogger for now, unless we really need a feature that it doesn't offer. - Joseph Z.

If you plan to go with WP later, you can always use it to import the old Blogger content. - Alex Cristache

Is there a way to import everything from Blogger over to WP? - Joe Dawson

Joe, read this: http://codex.wordpress.org/Importi... - Alex Cristache

Another thing to consider if you suddenly switch from Blogger to Wordpress is redirection (which Blogger does not provide) if you also switch domain names, and in any case also reducing the impact of duplicate content on your SEO without nuking all your Blogger content (which takes a while unless you're using a script and the Blogger API)... I wrote a 4-part series covering this and others; the first part is here: http://tinyurl.com/24696o - Arachne Jericho

@Arachne: Great series! I just gained five bookmarks in Mento. :-) (One is for the permalink-keeping plugin you mentioned.) - Voyagerfan5761

I've been quite happy with Movable Type but I'm going to install WP for a friend's blog because it is easier to install on her hosting service and I want to familiarize myself with it. - Heidi Cool

Looks nice! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

i feel all warm and fuzzy about it.... - now we just need bean bags - Darren Rowse

It's nice to have somewhere to land the helicopter. - Andy Roberts

LOL - i'd never looked at it that way..... now I just need a ProBlogger chopper to land on it! - Darren Rowse

Sweet! - Keith Bloemendaal

Darren, soon, soon! You will be a celebrity before you know it. lol But I doubt you want to be one! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

We're styling now! - Nancy Nally

Excellent! - Arachne Jericho

It looks great up there! - Joseph Z.

As far as I can tell there is no way to do this yet. - Kevin Bondelli

I couldn't see any way to do that either - hopefully they will add that feature sometime. - Trisha

We'll it does show that icon next to the title with the smiley faces in it, I assumed it could be changed like our avatars. - DarknessFalls

no, all groups have the same icon and there's no way to change it yet in admin. Hopefully they'll add the feature. - Darren Rowse

Yay! The option to Change Picture is there now. - Andy Roberts

Social networking sites - particularly, the Ning ones. :) - Sarah Parker

My tip is to link out and trackback to authority sites. You never know, they may just give you some link love back, or you may gain some readers from their site. - Danielle

They replayed it on the 5pm news in Brisbane, btw... how come you weren't wearing a problogger t-shirt Darren ;) - Martin Jamieson

Tris - seems ok to me.... others having problems? - Darren Rowse

Martin - hehe, good one. I was going for a slightly more 'professional' look :-) - Darren Rowse

I liked it... especially the adorable little boy at the end. - Shelly Weiss

I use delicious for my bookmarks. People may or may not see them, but I don't really care either way. I use stumbleupon, propeller and reddit for a traffic boost and to get new sites indexed faster. - Jason Peck

I use Delicious, I got too much spam with the others - Sally Church

StumbleUpon is too social for actual bookmarking - Michael

I use StumbleUpon to share links, and Google Reader to star things that come up through feeds. I used to use Del.icio.us for real bookmarks, but since the advent of browsers with smart location bars, I haven't needed bookmarks. - Arachne Jericho

SU mainly - Darren Rowse

yeah - will suspend judgment for a week I think but see some pros and cons - Darren Rowse

I think the problem might be having a big chunk of your comments been posted here instead of your blog, thats the mayor thing people have been ranting about. - Gadiel Rivera

Funny: that's what I was thinking. Let's watch and share observations. FF looks pretty solid, but we'd want to be sure before tying to it too firmly. Won't be too long before we can integrate off-blog comments with our sites. - Chris Baskind