Wordpress

As I wrote before, I used Wordpress to create my first experimental offspring blog using Wordpress (this one is using Blogger). For those that are about to put up a blog, or are just interested, here's a quick overview for you of my (first) experiences with switching platforms.

Wordpress
So Wordpress is originally this open source project that offers you a system you can install on your (hosted) server, it helps you to easily build a website or a blog. Since it is open source, and since there's a huge community around it (a necessity when using open source products, always look at the past and future  release schedules and the activity of the surrounding community), there's a huge amounts of resources (templates, plugins, books, forums, etc) available. Nice! The project itself is free, but some of the extensions cost money (which actually presents opportunities for developers and designers! I'm taking mental note of my own remark!).

Two flavors: wordpress.com and wordpress.org
So what's with wordpress.com vs wordpress.org? Well, the latter (.org) is where you get the stuff that you have to install and configure yourself (see previous section). Wordpress.com is a platform comparable to Blogger, that offers you a pre-installed wordpress blog / site, including an url in the form yourblog.wordpress.com. The basic functionality is free of charge. The .com version is what I'll be discussing in this post! Maybe you can also install Wordpress (.org) on a free webhost (000webhost is the most obvious choice here), I must try that once and blog about it!

Wordpress.com
So I went to wordpress.com, spent some time in registration process (it's quite straightforward) and before I knew it my blog was online. So far, so good. And comparable to Blogger. Next, I needed a simple but effective layout. I didn't want to spent days designing something, because of the nature of the project.

Templating
Just as Blogger, Wordpress.com offers you a choice of templates. These templates often have (a few) configurable options, such as changing the layout (1, 2 or sometimes even 3 columns), the location of the sidebar (left vs right) and the header image. In contrast to Blogger, I had a hard time finding a template that I really liked. In my opinion, most of the templates are rather crappy. 'No worries', I thought, 'I know CSS'. And I started to change some colors and text sizes, switching back and forth between a browser tab with the online editor and one with a preview.

Money
At some point I noticed a remark: to actually saving the CSS, I needed to pay money. I have to say I don't know how much, and perhaps it could be worth it, but once again this was totally against the whole idea of the project. Furthermore, Blogger does offer you the opportunity to change CSS. Also, Blogger offers you to go mad on the template's HTML, including whatever you want (such as Google Analytics, but more about that later). For Wordpress.com, if you want to go beyond the default offerings, you have to pay.

Posting
You can write posts in Blogger with an editor inside the browser, just as for Google's Blogger. You can embed pictures, videos, mark up your text, etcetera. You attribute tags and categories to your post easily. There's a auto-saving feature and version control. Also, you can schedule a post for later. I don't think Blogger has version control, but all other features it does have as well. However, I found Blogger's editor much more flexible, user friendly and intuitive. I've been having a hard time putting in extra newlines in the Wordpress editor, and inserting videos from another place than Dailymotion and Youtube didn't seem to work. You can edit HTML in Wordpress.com but if you insert an embedded vid or even a BR tag, and switch back or save the post, it's gone. I have to say even Blogger's editor is being a pain sometimes with inserting seemingly random tags that put more whitespace than I want, but this I can easily fix later in HTML mode. I've had much more troubles with Wordpress' editor. Both have a read-bore break-here tag, but the Wordpress template I chose templated the read-more link so hideously I decided not to use it.

Widgets / Gadgets
Blogger gives you lots of gadgets due to its compatibility with OpenSocial and iGoogle, and you can even create your own (see this post). Wordpress does have comparable functionalities and there must be a lot of cool things available, but not in the free online Wordpress.com version. Okay you have a few nice ones, and you could misuse the feed-reader gadget a little, but that's really it.

Useful stuff
Since you can not edit Wordpress.com's HTML, signing up for Google's Webmaster Tools could be a problem. Luckily, there's an option in the tools section in which you can set your identification code. So, this is actually a really nice feature! It does the same for Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center. I didn't even know these so this presents a great learning and blogging opportunity for later!

Community
Wordpress.com does seem to present more of a community. If you use certain tags, your post pops up in Wordpress site wide lists for those tags. I've seen a few people come in this way. Also, you can search all wordpress.com blogs. The comment system is linked to your Wordpress.com account, so your Gravatar (something else, maybe I will be talking about this in a later post) is visible and people are directly linked to your blog. This is actually the same in Blogger. It does present opportunities to generate traffic.

Pinging & Google
Both Blogger and Wordpress do the basic broadcasting to search engines such as Google for you.

Final verdict
Blogger vs Wordpress.com, without willing to pay for anything. I have to say: Blogger wins. Especially if you have some knowledge about HTML and CSS. Wordpress.org might be another story, but I'll have to come back to that later.