If you’re considering starting a blog, you have no doubt considered whether or not to use Google’s Blogger. If you did any kind of research on the matter, you quickly uncovered a hotbed of hatred towards the service:
- People hate Blogger because it is a haven for automated blogs that are nothing more than fronts for spammy advertising (called splogs, for spam + blogs).
- People hate Blogger because its commenting system is bizarre and unwieldy.
- People hate Blogger because it doesn’t give you pages or tags (they have to completely buck convention and use the word labels while the entire rest of the damn world uses the word tags. That’s almost Microsoftian!
- People hate Blogger because it’s easy for others to get your blog banned because they disagree with your beliefs or they simply don’t like your blog.
- People hate Blogger because it’s owned by someone else and they don’t have as much control over things as they’d like.
- A professional or business person would simply never use Blogger, because it conveys an amateur sensibility.
My first blogs were on Blogger, back before Google owned it. It was really the only service of its kind at the time. Since then, WordPress has shot past Blogger in prestige and credibility. I myself have come down pretty hard on Blogger in the past. No doubt that’s partly motivated by my WordPress-dependent livelihood, but I’ve spent tons of time on both platforms.
Being a more advanced blogger, I prefer WordPress. But is that reason enough to hate on Blogger? No. In fact, the newest beta version of Blogger is better than ever. But does Blogger really have any other advantages over other blogging platforms?
Yes! Go ahead, send me your hate, but it’s true. Blogger has its advantages. Here they are:
- Blogger is just ridiculously easier when it comes to pictures and video. This is something WordPress never has gotten right. Getting pictures into posts on Blogger is blessed simplicity compared to the overwrought image uploading monstrosity that is WordPress.
- Blogger lets you make deep and meaningful changes to its templates without requiring you to know HTML and CSS. Only a very few WordPress themes allow this.
- Blogger lets you edit sidebar content in a way that allows for nearly anything–but without writing a single line of code. WordPress has sidebar widgets that are severely limited in their ease-of-use by a non-coder.
- The amount of time, money, and frustration you must deal with using a hosted WordPress blog is colossal compared to Blogger. Between the WordPress upgrades and configurations, WordPress gives you never-ending work.
Now, hold on a minute, Michael! Don’t you make your money from WordPress? Why would you say these things? It’s true. I earn my living designing WordPress blogs and more as part of my blog consulting services. And WordPress does present a more professional image, which is vital for a business. But money and branding up front are not always the most important things to us. Saving time through ease-of-use could be a fatal blow for other blogging systems.
In the past, I’ve recommended that beginners create a starter blog in order to really learn blogging and avoid analysis paralysis when first starting out. That starter blog should be on Blogger if a beginner wants to experiment with monetization strategies, because the use of JavaScript is allowed on Blogger. It is not allowed on WordPress.com, the other popular free blog host.
When you are part of a group, and most of the members of that group adopt a practice or a method, it’s likely you will want to adopt it, too. Many artists and craftspeople have taken to Blogger. If you count yourself among them, using Blogger means you’re showing yourself to be a part of the group. All your artist and crafter friends are familiar with Blogger, too, so it makes sense for you to use it.
So is Blogger really that bad? I think I’ve done OK in presenting the advantages and disadvantages, but let me know what you think. But I think that depending on what you’re doing, Blogger might be right for you.