This week’s Monday Question comes a bit late as today is a public holiday and I haven’t had any time this past weekend to spend time on putting up a question for you to answer. Still I know that you love answering them, so I couldn’t disappoint and skip a week. This weekend I was thinking about the platform on which people do their blogging. The two biggest ones are of course Blogger and WordPress. Personally I never did any investigation about which platform I should start blogging on and I happened to stumble on WordPress when I wanted to blog (can’t remember if someone suggested it or if it was the first thing which came up on Google). Since I have written various articles about blogging and the frustrations it can bring (about commenting and subscribing) I have seen what both platforms offer and prefer WordPress because of the commenting system and automatic email updates when there is a response. As a blogger I also like the “behind the scenes” WordPress interface, which is very clean and easy to navigate. Of course you might be blogging on Blogger and have preferences for that.
So this week’s question is: Which blogging platform do you use and why have you chosen this platform/do you prefer it?
I’m using WordPress and the reason is fairly banal: my sister has been using WordPress and she just explained to me how easy it is to set up blog and publishing post. I haven’t really considered Blogger in the process 🙂
Well, a very good reason to do so if someone else is able to explain how things work because they already have experience with it.
WordPress has met all my needs and its a good setup. My biggest gripes with it concerns the app. But they are constantly updating it so my fingers are crossed that they’ll eventually get all the bugs worked out.
Although I have the app installed I never use it, basically because it doesn’t allow me to work in the same way as the site does (so I always use my browser instead of the app).
I started out on Blogger back in 2008, but made the change to WordPress a little over two years ago. I’ve not regretted my decision. And you’ve expressed the exact same reasons (and features) for my jumping ship, Nostra.
Nice to hear the opinion of someone who has worked with both of them.
WordPress. An IT person recommend it highly and I really find it easy to use. Based off comments from people who use blogger, I’m pretty sure I went the right way.
IT people always tell the truth 😉 It is very easy indeed and if you go to a self hosted site it is also fairly easy to move all posts and comments across (with a few exceptions). Also a very important reason to use WordPress for me.
I use WordPress for one site and Blogger for another one. I find both work just fine, but I think Blogger is easier to work with. I can design where I want my blog list to go, and I can edit the site a little easier. WordPress has helped me get more feedback
Interesting to hear the thoughts of someone who prefers Blogger when it comes to editing. I’ve not built a blog on it, only looked around so it’s good to hear that.
With feedback, do you mean comments? If I look at my own experience I often don’t bother leaving comments on Blogger sites (with a few exceptions of sites I visit regularly), basically because I don’t like the fact I have to revisit it just to see if my comment got a response. I simply visit way too many blogs to do it.
I also stumbled onto it, mainly because I was following a blog and it was easier to sign up with WordPress than to keep signing in. Eventually I decided to give it a try … and voila!
That’s also an original way to land up on WordPress!
I use WordPress. At the time I started blogging, I’d been commenting on a few other blogs at the time. It was always a pain to leave comments on Blogger sites because the comment system never seemed to work right in Firefox. It seems to work better now, but it was a pretty solid reason not to use Blogger at the time. WordPress generally just works.
Yeah, I remember that…comments would disappear or you had to jump through hoops..with WordPress it does seem a bit easier and more importantly, more consistent.
I use wordpress. While I’ve never used blogger, I was recommended that wordpress would be easier to use.
It seems more people seem to think so.
I actually started blogging with Blogger almost a year ago. At the time, I was a newbie trying to figure out what exactly blogging was all about. The designing seemed quite wonderful and it was fun to set up, but then I started to observe the User experience from people who visited and noticed commenting was a big deal. Not only that, it was a little complicated to get things done.
I jumped onto wordpress with the notion of maintaining both sites, but voila that didn’t happen. Immediately I was on wordpress, I never went back.
Now I’ve moved my site to a self hosted domain and I’m still using the wp admin cos, WordPress just makes blogging easier to do.
Yeah, I think in the end the user experience should be the most important, that’s also why I recently asked my reader about things to do better. I’m self hosting too and it works very easy.
I’ve noticed there’s a lot of work to go through when it comes to commenting on a Blogger site. You have to add your name, url etc…just to make a comment. Some people even have that Captcha program where you have to type in the crazy letters and numbers to prove you’re not a spammer.
And I know I cannot comment on a Blogger site with my iPhone sometimes. Some kind of bug going on there.
Glad I choose WordPress.
Yeah, a lot of bloggers on Blogger don’t look at which options can be turned off and that is very annoying. Shame to hear it is still giving issues sometimes on iPhone, you would think Blogger would have that figured out by now.
Self hosted WordPress user here. I’ve been blogging for years and started off using GreyMatter, then Movable Type, when CGI scripting was popular in self hosted blog software. I remember trying blogger.com for a little while but never really liked it. Couldn’t get it to work how I wanted it to.
When WordPress was released there was so much buzz around it, I couldn’t not try it. Also, I remember there being security issues with one of the blog platforms I was using at the time. Can’t remember which.
Anywho, have stuck with WordPress since then. It’s a platform I know fairly well and am comfortable with it. Also PHP – OpenSource – wins every time for me.
Seems like you are most experienced Jaina and I really appreciate your help earlier this year on my blog!
I love WordPress. Commenting is quick and easy, whereas it can be a huge ordeal to leave a simple comment on Blogger.
The simple fact that you have to type in your name and website (or other things) makes it less convenient compared to WordPress (at least if you are blogging yourself as well), because there it already knows all your details.