Blogging Sueblimely

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You may be wondering why I made the move over to Wordpress rather than just transferring my blogspot Blogger blog to my own domain.

Certain things bugged me about Blogger. Some of these have been solved by the new Blogger but it only possible, at this stage, to use classic blogger on your own domain.

Disadvantages of using blogspot Blogger:

1. I did not have as much control over my site as I would like. I enjoy tinkering with the coding and page customization.
2. I wanted to add features that were not available to Blogger.
3. Some features available to other blogging platforms are only possible by hacks which are sometimes difficult to implement.
4. Bloggger templates tend to lack sparkle. Unless you have the knowledge and inclination to style your theme yourself your blog will not have a distinct look.
5. The comments page cannot be edited and I wanted the ability to style it to match my blog template.
6. It is not possible to remove nofollow from comments.
7. The Blogger navigation bar that runs at the very top of the page is unattractive and identifies it as being a blogspot blog. Most people would not care if you were using an online blog platform or not but some see this as being unprofessional.
8. In classic blogger there is no ‘previous/next post’ link at the end of the page. This does not encourage readers to linger and find more to read.
9. Classic blogger does not have a built in post categorization and I did not find the work rounds satisfactory.
10. When leaving a comment on another blog, using your Blogger name, the link that appears on the comment is that of your Blogger profile page and not your blog page. I wanted to have the choice of which blog I am leave a link to.
11. The user profile page is a default Blogger page which acts as an about page. There is no control over the page design or the styling of the content you add.
12. You cannot add a static page to a blogger site. The only option is to write a post that acts as a static page by creating a ‘menu’ link to it.
13. If you create code in an html editor and copy and paste to the blogger post window line/paragraph breaks do not transfer correctly. Futher editing is needed to delete extra space.
14. Adding the captcha code feature for comments means that, even though you are already logged in to the dashboard, you still have to type in the code before publishing a post. This code times out quickly.
15. The Blogger site was often down. This does not happen if you publish yourself - using a reliable host.
16. Wordpress offered me the extra features I wanted.

Wordpress Features and Plugins not available to blogspot.

1. Static Pages
2. Recent Comments
3. Related post feature
4. Creating posts that belong to a series
5. Top Commenters list
6. Sticky Posts
7. Read More feature
8. Subscribe to comments
9. Automatic tag creation.
10. An archive list
11. Social networking plugins rather than having to manually code/use 3rd party widgets
12. Spamming protection plugins
13. Pagination for long posts
14. Site map creation
15. Ability to style main page and post pages differently (eg a different sidebar)

Please keep in mind that these are my reasons for using Wordpress, based on my own requirements.

Before considering a move of this kind it is a good idea to think about why you need to. Consider:

• What features are not supported by your current blogging platform that you really need?
• Can these features be added to your current blog with add-ins plugins, workarounds or 3rd party sites. (e.g. Feedburner)?
• Your level of skill and motivation to change - Wordpress is not quite as easy to operate as Blogger and there is a learning process involved in setting it up and managing your own domain. Do you have the time or inclination to go through this?
• Would other options suit you better? For example, if you are currently using Blogger classic - would a move over to the new and very much improved version satisfy your requirements? If you are happy using blogger classic consider moving this to your own domain name.

Some of the advantages of hosted blogs :

1. Quick and easy to setup.
2. The software is updated automatically for you.
3. Access to pre-installed themes/templates, plugins/widgets.
4. No costs involved.
5. No coding knowledge needed - although it is still handy to know how to do some styling.

NB - I am referring to Wordpress as installed on your own server not that hosted by Wordpress. com. The hosted Wordpress does not have the same number of features,  has only a default set of plugins and does not allow you the same level of design customization.

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