Ix-nay on Blogger-ay

So… After just re-inventing Wirepaper on Blogger, I have decided to abandon it on Blogger and switch to WordPress for it as well.

Why would I do this, you ask? Well… here’s my reasoning:

Pro-Blogger / Anti-Wordpress:

• Flexible layout/design: Blogger has a very flexible layout that can easily be tweaked.
• Scripting: Blogger allows for javascript!
• Monetization: Blogger allows for adsense (and many other ad networks via javascript)

Pro-Wordpress / Anti-Blogger:

• Site layout/design: The template system resets if you change the default template. A lot of hard work goes down the drain in a hurry.
• The default Blogger templates are rough around the edges. It takes a lot of work to make a blog look good.
• WordPress offers professional looking templates out of the box.
• Where are the pages? In Blogger, to make various “pages” for your site, you create a blog posting and then use that new post as a new page. It works, but it’s kludgey. In WordPress, pages are quite intuitive and easy to use.
• WordPress allows for ALL of my blogs to be managed with one interface (including stats reporting).

So… instead of struggle with the multiple platform approach, I thought I’d consolidate my blogs under one umbrella.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to be anti-blogger from now on. In fact, Blogger has some great features that I’d love to continue to take advantage of. But like I said in my last post, I’m not a designer, and WordPress takes the worry out of me doing the design work myself. I will miss the javascript functionality of blogger though. But who knows… If I build a big enough blog, I’ll spin it off from the wordpress.com hosting and host it myself, at which time I’ll be able to use javascript again (no javascript is a limitation of the free, hosted version of wordpress, but the self-host option enables you to use javascript as much as you want).

And really… for all the bells and whistles I can add to my blog, at the end of the day, my blog is about content. I will be able to take advantage of plenty of web2.0 functionality even if I am limited in what I can put into my blog directly. In fact, this’ll just make it more fun trying to include stuff in my blog in a creative way that doesn’t conflict with wordpress.com’s limitations.

Talk soon!

Todd