Blogging Google Blogger Or Wordpress ?

Google has a large raft of some of the best in class products including
Gmail, Google Maps, Google Reader, Google Search, Google Custom Search, Picasa, Google Docs, Google Scholar, Google News, Google Video / Youtube, Google IM / Talk, Google 411 some very little known about and some becoming the standard which others follow, and the list goes on. I also have a few weak Google Apps to talk about. I will create a post at a later date talking about the strength and weaknesses of some of these apps with small description and my own personal voting for each of the products I use and why.

But this article is just about choosing Blogger / Blogspot or Wordpress as your blogging platform


Blogger hosted on .blogspot.com
Against
1. Major Downtime with little or no support ( groups just a mess of whines with little feedback) and because the known issues is hosted on blogspot no help there iether ( I do notice Matt Cutts and a number of other top googlers do not use blogger but use Wordpress ) . I do wonder if this is because Google do not moniterize Blogger in any way so suspect it is a drain on resources and much lower down the pecking ladder for resources allocated

2. Limited Templates The templates in blogger are very limited in the number and styles available but still acceptable for most bloggers

3. Often slow depending on time of day both to update, and view

4. The tool that could provide some of the most interesting use i.e. next blog etc. quickly becomes full of rubbish and can even send you to a site that is attempting to download spyware.

5. Post Options which in theory you should be able to publish a post which will appear on the time and date in post options does not do what you think it will and just publishes with the date and time displayed for post option not on the time or day of post options


Blogger hosted on your own domain
Against

1. Even more limited on the templates available

2. Many of the best things like adding widgets etc are not available on the templates you can use

3. Because of the way your blog is updated via FTP it can be slow to update and if you use to many labels once your blog gets beyond 100 or so posts can time out in the middle ( you can restart though )

4 Some of the nicest things such as blogclouds and many others are not available



Blogger hosted on .blogspot.com
For

1. Super easy to set up and easy to use even as a novice blogger

2. The tools for adding photos or video in the post are easy to use and also the flexabillity for things like bold font color etc etc is easy once you have mastered moving between HTML Edit and compose

3. Comment Moderation and control through the use of captcha is easy

4. The collaberation tool is easy to use and allows you to keep control of the overall blog while allowing others to create posts

5. Editing the template and moving things around once you understand is both quick and easy and quite powerfull

6. Adding a new widget, photo, adsense, polls, blog rolls and much more to your sidebar using the new blogger templates is a breeze.


Blogger hosted on your own domain
For

1 Only the HTML and graphics files are installed on your server

2 When Blogger Down your blog hosted on your own server will still run if you have made sure all graphics etc are local to your server




Wordpress Blog Hosted at Wordpress
Against

1. The choices of templates are vast but editing them is difficult

2. The tools to insert photos, videos are not as quick and easy to use

3. The templates in general when hosted at wordpress are not as Search Engine Friendly if you do not know how to edit

4. The use of javascript for widgets is severely restricting

5. Because of javascript restrictions problems with running adsense on Wordpress Blogs

6. Blogs hosted on Wordpress do not appear as well as blogger blogs do in Search Engine rankings resulting in less 1st time visitors

Wordpress Blog Hosted on your own domain
Against

1. This is the biggest problem in my opinion and that is the chances of blog being hacked because Wordpress uses MySQL and PHP to manage your blog means you must be sure you are fully up to date on patches.

2. Because most hosting services put all MySQL databases on seperate servers if you are on a busy shared server your blog can run like treacle



Wordpress Blog Hosted at Wordpress
For

1. Thousands of templates available allowing great looking blogs

2. Fairly easy to use

3. Great community feeling between Wordpress bloggers and a great forum well supported by other wordpress bloggers to help.

4. Generaly better quality blogs with less intrusive advertising


Wordpress Blog Hosted on your own domain
For

1 Great looking sites that look more like websites than blogs

2 Use of javascript for adsense etc.



Well that is my small summary as you can tell I am not up on Wordpress as Blogger as I only run a single blog on wordpress for testing , my main issue with wordpress is the number of patches that need to be applied if your running on your own server or YOU WILL BE HACKED and for running on wordpress server the difficulty to running adds if your blog becomes popular .

My Current Recommendations

New Blogger
Google Blogger


Power Blogger planning on creating a business with advertising and own domain

Wodpress Instalation on own server but make sure you patch regulary