Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Blogger versus Wordpress

My blogger account has been jammed up for a couple weeks. I could post content, but it wasn't moving on to the home page. I got pretty frustrated so I started an experiment on Wordpress. Now I'm considering switching over fulltime. I'd like to get some votes on moving readers over to the new site versus keeping this Blogger account running.

PROS of moving over to WordPress:
  • Some of my favorite blogs recently moved from Blogger to Wordpress and they look really good. I think the new "test" blog looks better than this one already, and I haven't done much to it yet.
  • I've been more happy with Flickr than Picassa as a photo site, and Flickr (owned by Yahoo) and Blogger (owned by Google)don't get along. The Flickr photos don't size right. Flickr photos fit correctly on Wordpress.
  • I'm familiar enough with the Wordpress dashboard and I can get moving pretty quickly on it. I'm also inspired to most more often in the new deal.

    CONS of moving from Blogger to Wordpress:
  • I lose all of the search engine goodwill I've built up so far.
  • Everybody has to update their Oregon Outdoor Journal URLs to the new site.
  • I'd still have to keep my blogger account for a couple other blogs I maintain.
  • I might shift my focus on the new blog to more personal/navel gazing style, rather than trying to keep up with Oregon Outdoor news and controversies. I'd still talk about fishing, environmental news -- but I'd also post more about what I'm reading, what I'm doing at work, etc.

    Looking for feedback. What do you think?

    PS: Special thanks to Ron Southern for helping me kickstart this thing and get it displaying again.
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    3 comments:

    Editor said...

    Ron has helped me too. I would suggest staying here. Your blog looks good and they are finally making some good changes in Blogger. It's free too.
    Good luck!
    Rex

    8:58 PM
    thestatusjoe said...

    wordpress is the bomb, but it's up to you how much value you assign your google juice. you might also be able to set it up so it redirects to the new account.

    wordpress.com templates are pretty, very functional, and include some pretty nice widgets that are regularly refreshed. that said, you can't tweak the style. repeat: at all. no css, no framework adjustments. most themes you can customize the header but that's about it. what you see is what you get.

    also: they don't allow javascript or div tags for security reasons, which can seriously hamper niftyness if you plan on doing anything overtly shnazzy like embedding a flickr slideshow, google calendar, etc.

    that said, i've had a great experience with them and you can work around the reasonable constraints. being hosted by them also gives you potentialy built-in traffic; if you post something that a decent amount of people are looking at, your post's hyperlinked header will get thumbtacked to the dashboard news feed of wordpress.com's million-plus users.

    p.s. regardless of what you do, you should get a feedburner account and burn your rss feed through them. you can pimp the hell out of your feed (read: splice bookmarks and photos into your feed, etc.), and it's the equivalent of having a cell phone number you don't have to change if you ever migrate.

    - joe

    10:07 PM
    Bpaul said...

    Just know that, without a doubt, you will lose readership. It's sad but true, many folks won't bother to change their bookmarks/subscriptions.

    If it's low right now, or you don't mind "starting over" it may be worth it to you.

    8:43 AM

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