We might think that Wordpress is sure the best blog publishing platform ever but one thing that blogger sure beats it at : BEING SOCIAL. I know we’ve got our trackback and pingback that get to link posts and create some social activity — social linkage of posts — but blogger has got something nice under its cover : that searchbar at the top.
But what could that little sometimes messy searchbar gets to be useful? Look at it carefully, play with it and you will see how social this gets to be.
Searching to be social?
The search facility allows you to search within your own blog on blogger or within the whole blogosphere that blogger gets to group :
Then who might have searched for something that sure your blog on blogger might have and tadaaaa the person is on your very own blog on blogger.
could the next one be hiding something great?
And now the very very most sociable thing that I’ve seen. Blogger creates a whole world with that, grouping all its blogger and making blogging becoming social. That very button : 
once clicked unlaunch a whole new random lucky blog : who might be your neighbour on this very own blogger.com. That makes you feel surrounded by people, and just how many people might click on it to get to your own blog. Sure that’s more social than wordpress’ trackback and pingback.
The weakness behind : template
But still blogger has to work it to reach the professionalism behind wordpress. I think(because yeah I’ve tasted blogger because that was my first home ground when I landed in the blogosphere) the only very only problem that gets to arise is because of the famous : TEMPLATE. Sure wordpress.com blogs don’t allow you to edit your template and that gets to put real constraints on it, the hosted version provided by wordpress.org gets you being free to do what you want.
So yeah that template, I think that’s the weakness behind blogger : there’s a principle in programming : MODULARITY, that of using modules : digestible and SEPARATE chunks of code instead of a whole ONLY ONE big lot of chunky code(the one you would see once that template loads into your browser’s window). I think that blogger’s template should be having different sections(tabs), individual section allowing you to edit different parts/modules of that blogger : be it its comment section, its header section, its footer as it goes but SEPARATELY and INDIVIDUALLY within its own tab/section.
This makes things a lot lot easier and decreases greatly the learning curve. Sure seeing a whole big big listing of code like that in blogger’s template can really mess up your head and that gets also to mess up when you try to mod things in the very deep of your blogger’s blog. I think that’s a real weakness of blogger : having it all in ONE AND ONLY ONE PLACE : THE LONELY TEMPLATE
Blogger would soon be going on beta :
Let’s see what’s more they’ve got under their beta that can really make some professional blog. A tour of what the beta would be promising? or what’s the new feature blogger might promise or more more a video live : demonstrating blogger beta features.
what would you site for?
Now you know it, if you want to be blogging for something really professional choose wordpress but if being social is your contract, making friends, meeting new blog at the click of a next blog >> and entering the randonmess that blogger might unveil to you : then choose blogger.
What would you do? Are you already on some blog publishing platform, then why did you choose it? Were you searching for something pro or social? Would you tell me?
Tags: 35 Comments
35 responses so far ↓
you’re quite right about that.
I would add some good things for blogger :
-free hosting (which is difficult to find unless you know people on internet)
-anyone can blog without any knowledge : if you only want to post things, you can have a already ready template and you don’t have to change anything if you d’ont want to.
but you’re right about the template : it’s not easy to customize. I like your idea of modularity, it would be nice ! or at least, an easier way to put your favorite links (because most of people dont want do search for the good lines in the template to change these links).
I would say : blogger is good to begin blogging if you are not good at coding things. But if you want to customize your template, it is not sufficient.
@ nym I think you told the very things that a wanabe first time blogger would search for, that’s exactly the same thing that happened to me when I saw blogs and wanted to have mine
blogger creates that very blog that you can learn a lot from
infact talking about those links, if I hadn’t be on blogger trying to change those messy links, I wouldn’t be here on wordpress knowing how to mod every bits and bytes of my template for my blog 
I can really thank blogger’s template codes to really teach me something 
a blog is something personal, something mine and seeing it the way I would like is something important for me so that’s why I really dipped my hands into the codes, learn things out from the blogger hacker series inorder to have the look I wanted for my playground.
For the template customisation I think it’s because blogger’s template use html codes instead of php calls(that wordpress files would be using to display every bits and bytes)
infact that what makes things so easy a simple line of php call gets to do great things. ha when I saw that chunk of code on blogger that would mod my comment, better not tell it
kinda cool you brought your insights in here, having the lady behind the blogger of nym-blog @ blogspot.com
Wordpress has still an edge on blogger but the gap is closing.
The only advantage so far of wordpess is his amount of plg-in but blogger also is beginning to integrate third-party plug-ins.
@ josh: and that makes 1 more point for wordpress
what dude blogger integrating 3rd party stuffs
I don’t think that might come, even with their beta, there isn’t something like this 
wow!!!
i couldn’t ve written it that well!
since last year, me mate have been urging to get the hell out of msn (now live) space and to start blogging on blogger/ wordpress.
i’ve been trying either one of them but rite now, i don’t ve sufficient time as to be able to do all the necessary coding…so yeah, i’m keeping life simple by staying at live space which is very restricting in that it allows only msn users to comment! on top of that, it’s search engine sucks!!!! i rarely get what i want out of it….aaaaargh!!!! (6) anyways, come summer hols, i’ll have a go at blogger again!
that makes another 1 point for blogger(waz siding to blogger) so the score is draw
@ waz: thanks for the compliment dude, gotta tell me when that blog on blogger would be ready, I would be adding it among my SquareLinkers
yeah that you can be sure, we are all waiting for that summer holidays
infact when that would be coming I think I would even send out some firecrackers or poke some bottles on the street 
lafaya sa mane bisin mette sa afond lerla 
lol
same here!!!
about me blog on blogger, i will let u know but u may find urself waiting a long time!
me dilemma now is that i”ve blogged so much on live zat i’m a bit reticent to move out…..though move out i’ll have to…just don’t have the determination yet!
First of all, thanks for the post you’ve got here. Anyways, I thought of moving to wordpress quite a few times but finally still stick myself to the blogger. The reason is if i move to wordpress.com (which provides free hosting as well) we can’t modify anything at all and if I get it to host it myself it would cost my some bucks a month but I can change anything i want to. Since i’m quite poor at the moment and I don’t really have time for a large mod, I decided to stay with blogger and it’s not too bad because blogger allows allow us to play around with CSS and javascript so that is quite alot of thing that we can make blogger very personal. And yeah I like to see the modularity feature and also catergories feature in the next generation of blogger. I tried to create a catergories for blogger on my own but it didn’t really work well so I dropped it out. i’ll try to fix it when i have time. Yeah, we can do it with other tagging web services like del.icio.us but I don’t like the fact that we have to jump out of our own blogs when using that feature.
Cheerz.
@ pk
thanks dude for making it to here, so great to see you here
yo blog.mu offers free hosting for your blog. Stéphane Lee gets to do a great job there
as for the categories, how about the Blogger Hacker Series, they may have interesting stuffs in that subjest, have you tried that?
[…] To share ideas with my friends, folk bloggers and for myself. My self therapy in understanding all those why. Why are people using Adsense? Why might blogger be better than wordpress? Why do bloggers blog? Why I’m myself continuing to blog? Why I started blogging? The mystery behind the lust of traffic? […]
Hi: I´m from Brazil. I have 2 blogs (one in wp, and another in beta blogger). For me, the most i like is the fact of Blogger lets me editing my template more easy than wp (who has a lot of php codes). I try wp for now, but i still like more blogger for that reason…
@claudia : you are on BETA blogger, and it’s much more easier to customize your template with beta than with the old Blogger ! If you understand french, see there, i post it when i converted my old blogger blog to a beta blogger one.
Maybe Hans can confirme it but I think WP proposed much more “widgets” to customize your template ?
@ claudia renata
yo, claudia. thanks for making the visit upto here. yeah there’re lots of php lines but actually if you try to change them, it’s gonna become second nature, changing this and there : trying to see what they gonna do and you’re gonna learn how to place things there for you blog even without having to learn php.
All things here have been done without me knowing a bit of php. Just some trying and risk might do it. It’s how I learnt php infact then.
as for the widgets that nym talked, yeah I think you have to install the plugin and everything gonna just take you a slide here and there without dipping your hands into php or manual editing.
gotta tell me if you need help with your wp installation, maybe I can help?
Yeah i understand what you’re trying to say hans. indeed, that’s how i got my hands onto php too. I learnt it just by various trials and errors. but of course, blogger is much easier to set up than wordpress if you want to get it up and running quick.(in fact i’m still decodong where to put my blog
(nothing to do with this post but Iloooove your new smileys Hans ! :aww: )
@ nym
too great, I a bit hesitated whether to choose that one or the previous package. I think it’s just because they keep moving that’s why I choose it. oufff, I thought nobody gonna like that one
@ everybody
if you’re gonna change for beta blogger, just get to Nym’s homeplace.
. Perhaps she might convince you to change for beta.
If you love the new emoticons I’ve implemented, just get to Nyssa homeplace. to get a grap of them for your hosted wordpress.
lol just created a blogger account for my dad for him to share his bankai rocking cool cooking jutsus!
as for mine i have not yet decided which platform to use. (its a wp-blogger-dotclear conflict, who will win??) 
good luck for the choice , kyu ! let us know when this blog is ready ! :grinnod:
Okay i will let all of you know. but i think i will be hosted by blog.mu so that encourages me towards wp or dotclear… lol the beta blogger already exists but it is kind of well, empty =P =P
I A M B E I N G H O S T E D ! ! ! !
:grinnod: just click on my name for the link (Hey i just opened this blog 2 hours ago, its normal that its empty!! 
Big thanks to Stephane Lee @ blog.mu! I have voted for wordpress finally. still need to do the great customisation a la Kyushiro style
yo kyushiro,
how come we can’t comment on your blog!?!
lol @ waz its okay now. fixed it. thanks for the info dude
Erm ..
Blogger Vs WordPress ..
Sure .. blogger gonnnna beat wordpress !!!!!!!!!! :bleh:
Anoop simpleguy is back on the playground to show u guys his blog ..
Erm .. yes .. mine ..
Still in beta phase .. but am tweaking it up ..
Mais bon .. =D
:no: :no: :no:
I know its not yet ready but anyone who wishes to comment can do so on : SimpleGuy’s Place
hmmm .. sooorry if anyone does not like it ..
SooOooorry :sweat:
Google…
Google is the best search engine…
Hi, Hans, I know this is really late (Blogger was just starting in Beta?!?), and I’m not at all familiar with WP, but I really like the new Blogger (no longer Beta).
The drag-and-drop template editing is great for people like me who know almost zilch about coding, though I am learning. And they do allow you to utilize 3rd party plug-ins. I have several non-Blogger functions on my blog. Hey, I just added one courtesy of you.
As I’m learning more, I’m finding that I can experiment with the code a little instead of depending on the drag-and-drop feature. What do you think of the new Blogger?
@ Revka
I think blogger is fine for the beginner blogger and I think that’s what they are aiming to get onboard. Allowing you to do everything without you touching a bit of code. Wordpress is great, infact too great but you should have at least a little knowledge of code/php,etc to modify something. Hey if at anytime you would like to switch to Wordpress, I would be too glad to help you getting everything working perfectly.
One thing that I also remark. it’s just my personal opinion though is that blogger could fight spam better that some other platform. I’ve yet to blog about this. Hope this post will see the light of the blogosphere.
thanks very much for reading through.
Wow, Hans! I really appreciate your offer to help me set up a Wordpress blog. I just might take you up on that sometime. Thanks.
[…] My self therapy in understanding all those why/how/what/could. Why are people using Adsense? could blogger beat beat wordpress? how to blog and love it? Why I’m myself continuing to blog? Why I started blogging? The […]
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[…] think that’s the major social advantage of the Blogger platform compared to Wordpress, which seems monotonous and lonely if you don’t have the patience of gathering good links in […]
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Free Blogger Template Codes…
I don’t agree with you in 100%, but you covered some good points regarding this topic…