Friday, January 29, 2010

Blogger vs. the other ones

I've been on Blogger for what now seems as ever, but as you've learned from my previous post I decided to host my wedding blog on WordPress. I'm not quite sure why I went with WordPress, but it was probably due to some great designs that I had seen around - and tabs. I love tabs! I guess that there was a certain hope in there for something more sophisticated.

Now that I have both, I can see the pros and cons of both and I'm not sure of what I want to do. Do I want to keep this blog here, where it's been all along? Do I want to move it over to WordPress? Or about some of the other sites, such as TypePad and Tumblr? It's so hard since there are so many options and no "perfect" option.

Since I have only tried WP and Blogger (both as free accounts), here are my personal pros and cons for each:

Blogger:
  • Pro: You can edit your CSS!!! Not that I made that many changes to this template, but I like the fact that I can change anything and everything that I want around.
  • Pro: A history, a sense of belonging.
  • Con: Limited & mostly ugly templates.
  • Con: No tabs.
  • Con: Puts you in charge of deleting spam (and I have just deleted 10 spammed messages today!)
  • Con: I have to use a web counter service - and can't even remember my password anymore!
WordPress:
  • Pro: The Dashboard is genius. It makes my life so much easier.
  • Pro: Included stats! It's addictive.
  • Pro: Automatic detection of spam comments.
  • Pro: The Widgets make (certain) things easy!
  • Con: No CSS to edit (unless you are willing to pay).
  • Con: No perfect template (unless you are willing to pay).
So. While it seems that my preference is leaning more towards WP, I'm still holding on for dear life to my CSS and the option to add certain things, like my DOPPLR badge or LinkWithin...

What do you think? How did you choose your blogging platform and what's keeping you there?

4 Comments:

Blogger Jaky said...

I changed to wordpress.com and then again turned back to blogger. Blogger just works! I like it and prefer posting on it. Of course wordpress has some features, but blogger rules for now.

I use google analytics for visitor counting and other stats - which country, which region, which post etc etc...I've also added a new 'Disqus 'commenting system to my blog. Everything just works well now.

January 31, 2010 1:16 a.m.  
Blogger BL said...

Oh please help me. I'm a retarted blogger and I have no idea how to change the dismal black on my Background! Sadly, I don't even know what CSS is, but you're a lifesaver because now I know I CAN change it if I want to. (Wipes tear, thank you.) I've looked everywhere. :-/
Nice setup ya got here, and if you haven't gotten mearried already, congratulation!

Wait. That totally didn't sound right.

Can you tell me how to change the background here?
So sorry to bother you but I do appreciate it!

January 31, 2010 1:43 a.m.  
Blogger Magalie said...

Hi B! Thank you for making me laugh! I remember very well trying to figure out CSS in the beginning and there's a lot of frustration to be had! I checked your blog to see if we had the same theme, so that I would give you the right info. If you go into your template, the first thing that you will see under Blogger Template Style (basically the credit for the template) is this:

body {
background:#101010;
margin:0;
padding:40px 20px;
font:x-small "Trebuchet MS",Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif;
text-align:center;
color:#ccc;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
}

The line that says "background" is where you change the colour. The line that says "color" is where you would change your text's colour.(The tags right after the body are for links - this is also where you would change the colour for your links.)

To know what code to use for the colours, check out the references on here: http://www.webreference.com/html/reference/color/.

I hope this helps!!!

January 31, 2010 2:57 p.m.  
Blogger onceuponasunflower said...

I used wordpress for a school project, but I've found blogger to be a bit easier to use. I agree, though, the templates are very dull. Good luck figuring out what you want to do.

January 31, 2010 3:58 p.m.  

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