WordPress vs. blogger

Web tutorial

Without a doubt, a blog is the most popular way to get a web presence quickly and cheaply, and the two most popular services are WordPress.com and Google’s blogger.com. Both are more or less free services that store the content you create on their web servers — in other words, in the cloud.

First let’s differentiate these services and explain some terms: WordPress is open source software (created by many, free to use and open to modification, assuming you know what you’re doing). The software WordPress powers the website WordPress.com, run by the private company Automattic, which also contributes to the development of the software, WordPress. You can get a free account at WordPress.com, which will host your blog, but you don’t actually have access to all the features of the WordPress software without paying extra, and that’s frankly fine for most people. Here’s a page that further explains the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

blogger is a Google company that will also host your blog for free, but it is powered by proprietary software, meaning you can’t modify the software or put that software on your own web server. Being open source software, you can install WordPress on your own web server, and many web hosting companies will either install the software for you or you’ll find it’s already pre-installed. A future article will address installing the software on your web server. Being proprietary, you can’t install the blogger software on your web server.

At first blush, these two services are very similar. After applying for a free account, you get to choose a theme or template (usually from a limited selection), give a name to the blog and write a description and then write your first blog entry. Total time maybe ten minutes. But I’m going to bet you won’t be happy with the theme or template you picked, especially because you’re usually presented with a limited selection at first so as not to overwhelm you. So for the next several hours — or possibly days — you’ll search for other templates for blogger or themes at WordPress.com.

At WordPress.com, however, you’re pretty much limited to the 150 or so free themes or the 17 premium themes. Even if you find a free theme elsewhere on the web, you can’t install it unless you pay for VIP hosting. Again though, most people don’t need a custom or premium theme. After all, Jane Austen’s World just uses the standard TwentyTen theme, and it looks pretty good.

In contrast, blogger.com (confusingly the actual blogs reside at blogspot.com) has no paid components and all the features of the proprietary software are available. The big drawback, however, is the limited number of templates immediately available; although more elements of those templates can be modified than the corresponding themes of WordPress.com. So at first it seems difficult to get the template you want at blogger. But there are many free blogger templates available on the web and it costs nothing for you to use them on blogger. And blogger makes it relatively easy to modify the structure of existing templates and then save those changes as your own unique template.

So which is better? I admit to a fondness for blogger.com, although I also use WordPress installed on my own web servers to power several blogs. And I’m not alone in using both WordPress and blogger: Vic Sanborn uses blogger.com for Jane Austen Today and as mentioned above WordPress.com for Jane Austen’s World. It’s also a lot easier to make money with blogger.com, as being a Google company, the integration with AdSense (Google ads on your blog) is a breeze. In fact, you login to blogger using your Google username and password.

Another downside of WordPress.com are the ads the company will occasionally insert in your blog, although I actually find it a rare occurrence. Still it annoys some. And I could go back and forth on which service is easier to customize or has better community support or has better gadgets. Ultimately it’s what you like and are accustomed to. If you’ve already installed WordPress on a web server, then you might be drawn to using WordPress.com to host your blog. Of course if you’ve already installed WordPress on a server, you probably don’t need to read this tutorial.

In the next tutorial, I’ll cover actually using blogger to host your blog — specifically how to choose and modify a template — followed by WordPress.com.