Blogger, Wordpress, or Other?
June 25, 2009 by Stephen Grisham Sr.
Filed under Tools & Techniques
For starters, we should dispel a myth. It is often alleged that Google has ownership of your content (copyright) when you use their blogging service. But this is just not the case. While Google controls their own intellectual rights, your website content is owned by the entitled party or writer. They post this quite plainly within their TOS conditions. http://www.blogger.com/terms.g
Limitations of content. Google is authorized to limit, or even terminate your account when your content violates their service conditions. (This is not a factor for most writers, the permitted content is very broad – and is limited mainly to hate and illegal activities) Using Wordpress, you host your blog on the hosting account that you possess. While you have power over your content, you may yet be bound to the restrictions of the TOS or terms that your web hosting company lays out.
Simplicity of Installation: It’s usually easier to install Blogger. If Fantastico is not included in your hosting service, it can be difficult to install Wordpress unless you are comfortable using your server control panel and FTP.
Google is the winner when it comes to customization. It’s easier to edit template layouts, styles, and colors with Blogger than Wordpress. With Wordpress, in order to make changes to a template that does not quite suit you as is, you will have to learn PHP and HTML.
Each platform offers dozens of templates; and private individuals have created even more template formats, with the numbers on the rise still. Most third-party templates are free, but they will accept donations. Don’t worry, they are polite about asking for contributions and any that I’ve seen do not spam you or require you to register — though they may request that you retain a very small and unobtrusive link to their website to help them out.
Xanga, Drupal (difficult to learn), Joomla, are other blog software which can be used.
No charge blog hosting can be found at wordpress.com, Blogger, Myspace, TypePad, and many more.
The real deciding factor is how much control you wish to have over your site and how skilled your are with HTML, PHP and server operation (FTP, databases, etc.). Select Wordpress if you already know HTML and are comfortable with learning PHP (it’s not that hard). Choose Google if you are worried about money, or if you just want to begin hassle-free blogging.
