I've seen many discussions and debates of which is the best blogging platform on the web, between these two; the Google owned blogging platform Blogger and another used my many, Wordpress. Each has its unique effectiveness and functionality. Both of the blogging platforms has its own Pros and Cons. Which is better? It really depends on what you think, but before you make up your mind you better read about these two platforms in details.
| Functions | Blogger | Wordpress |
Post Writer | Easy to use, user friendly and simple. Can be switched to other writers. | Simple, user friendly, Microsoft Office-like, easy to use. |
| Designing and customization | Provides boring very simple default templates, extremely easy to customize; colors, fonts, images, backgrounds, sizes...etc Almost fully customizable. | No template editing. Has built-in 100+ templates to choose from. Some have extra customization options. Style sheet editing is only available as a paid upgrade. |
| Image storage | 1 Gigabyte (can be bought more) via Picasa Web Album, the only way to browse images through Blogger. | 3 Gigabytes (can be bought more). Paid upgrades can be bought for more space and more extensions including; .pdf, .doc, .odt and .ppt files. |
| Traffic tracking | Built-in traffic tracking system, although you can use any other third-party scripts. | Has built-in stats, 2 days stats as well as daily, weekly and monthly charts. |
| Importing other Blogs | Only from another Blogger Blog*Spot blog. | Importable from all well-known blogging platforms; Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, Yahoo! 360, another Wordpress blog and even more |
| Static pages | Only 10 static pages allowed no matter what. | Unlimited but are separate from the “posts” menu. |
| Custom Domains | Can be bought in Blogger via Google with Google Checkout from GoDaddy at $10 a year. All complicated things are automatically done for you. Free domain mapping. | Can be bought with Wordpress at 15 USD a year. If all you want is their blogging platform for you already owned domain, mapping costs 10 USD a year. |
| Private Blogs | You can restrict access to visitors and allow only invited Google readers. | You can restrict access to 35 Wordpress users. (unlimited after a paid upgrade) Individual posts can be private or password protected. |
| Team Blogging | Administrators and other Blogger co-writers only. | Administrators, Editors, Contributors and Authors may modify or create content. |
| Comments | Spam filtering and moderation options. Either leave or delete, no editing. | Akismet spam protection, moderation and comment editing. |
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| Blogger Built-in Tracking Stats |
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| Wordpress CSS Style Sheet Editor |
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| Blogger Default Templates |
| Blogger | Wordpress | Description |
Gadgets/ Widgets/ HTML scripts | Plug-ins | Third-party software applications. |
| Text | Text | A box of information of editable words/links/colors. |
| Images | Images | Simply an image. (Galleries available as well) |
| Blog Archives | Archives | A collection of all your posts, could be used as a sitemap. |
| Blog Stats | Blog Stats | A counter of visitors of your website. |
| Search | Search | For Blogger, you can use any third-party scripts, but the built-in search is Google's Custom Search. |
| Profile | Author's Box | Display information about yourself. Alternatively, you can create an about me page. |
| Followers | Blog Subscriptions | Displays the amount of readers who follows your blog, |
| HTML Editing | Meta | To modify the meta keywords and texts, for Blogger users it has to be done through editing the template. |
| Labels/ HTML scripts | Categories/Tag Cloud | A customizable list of labels or tags used in your posts. Blogger users may use third-party scripts. |
| Link List | Pages | A list of static pages or any other websites you want to display. |
| Popular Posts | Top Posts/ Rated/Clicks | A box displaying your top posts. (calculated with the most views/interactions) For more different styles, you can use third-party scripts from the web. |
| HTML scripts | Recent Posts/ Comments | An application showing your recent posts or recent comments made on the blog. |
| Adsense | Plug-ins | Google owns Blogger and there's no trouble setting Adsense up for Blogger but for Wordpress you need to install a particular Adsense plug-in. |
| Feed | RSS | Each blog when set up has a default RSS page. |
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| WordPress Admin Control Panel |
Blogger is extremely user-friendly and simple to use, recommended by many first time Bloggers, but those who chose WordPress instead find it a little hard and annoying in the beginning mostly because many extended functions require the paid upgrade, although the WordPress users get used to it after a certain time and recommend it over Blogger, basically the people out there are saying Blogger is better when you're a beginner and just starting out to blog and WordPress is the essential choice if you're an experienced blogger and you're blogging for the long run.
But that's not true and not the case for everyone out there, some people fancy Blogger more than Wordpress, it's all about whether you like it or not. For example, I use Blogger not because I don't like WordPress but because I like Blogger better (that's stupid I know), plus when you register for a custom domain all those hosting stuff Google will automatically do it for you, life is way easier with Google! Not to mention Google has many many more services that we all use, especially Adsense!
So which one should I use? Blogger or WordPress?
If you are a beginner blogger then I recommend Blogger, it is very simple.
If you are already a blogger that has blogged for a quiet amount of time, and is seem to dislike your current blogging platform then switch to WordPress give it a shot, best of all, you can import your Blog*Spot blog to WordPress in a matter of few clicks, you can't do it the other way though. (that means you cannot import your WordPress blog to Blogger).
Question Time
Which do you think is the best blogging platform?
Why?
Which do you think is the best blogging platform?
Why?