WordPress Vs Blogger: An Interesting Experience
It’s around one year since I started Blogging. I was introduced to blogging by my friend MSR. I started with two blogs. One in WordPress and one in Blogger (The free versions of both). For the last one year, I have been posting the same content, simultaneously, in both WordPress as well as Blogger almost at the same time, with similar tags, titles etc. So when you visit,
http://destinationinfinity.wordpress.com and
http://destinationinfinity.blogspot.com
you would find that they have the same content. And when I visit other blogs, I comment as a WordPress user in WordPress blogs and Blogspot user in Blogger sites. This post is to share my experiences and stats for both of them for the last one year.
Since I am not an expert like Daniel of Dailyblogtips, I can only share my experiences as a beginner and a novice. And besides, I use only the basic services of both the above blogging platforms, as blogging is just a hobby for me. So please do point out, if there are some glaring mistakes in my observations and you could add your own too in the comments section.
Theme:
I love everything about my WordPress theme – the colour, header, design, background and pretty much everything. But the level of customization is limited here. With Blogger, the themes are simpler (When I started), but I can change the background/foreground/font colours if I wish – and I did. My friend says we can do much more customization in Blogger but I don’t understand technical terms like CSS etc. While WordPress gives all the important Widgets needed for the sidebar, Blogger gives much more. You can access them directly from the Blogger site, and that makes it easier for people like me. But you don’t have the recent comments widget in Blogger and I did try to get the code from the internet, but couldn’t make it work! But when I wanted a sliding text in my sidebar, I searched and got a piece of code in the net, which I applied to both Blogger and WordPress. The code worked only in Blogger.
Posting Options:
Both WordPress and Blogger are simple and easy to use for posting of articles. While WordPress has more posting options (Like Addpoll, Excerpt, Auto Pingback, Password protect post etc.), with Blogger I can post in languages other than English (Like Tamil and Hindi) directly from the site.
Comments:
I have enabled comments in both WordPress and Blogger and I also comment on other interesting WordPress and Blogger blogs. The wordpress comments section with just three fields and open interface right from the beginning, is very easy to work with. Especially when I am reading and commenting from my mobile phone. Initially Blogger did not allow comments from other blogging platforms (I think), but now they do. Blogger has an option to request the commenter for word verification, to avoid spam comments. But Akismet, in WordPress does a decent job of avoiding spam comments. I also like the Email Comments feature of Blogger. It is easy to keep track of the replies when I comment on other Blogger sites.
Tracking of Stats:
I track stats for both my blogs using,
1. The inbuilt stats checking facility available in the wordpress site,
2. Google Analytics for Blogger.
Google Analytics gives you a lot of options to track the activity in your website. But I found that Analytics was slow and gives you much more information than required for a hobbyist like me. That makes me search for the relevant information each time and hence more time needs to be spent. WordPress on the other hand, gives me the no. of views per day/per month, referring websites, terms used in the search engine to reach my page, the posts that were actually viewed on a particular day and the number of hits – All this at the click of a single button. What more could I want?
Statistics:
Now, let us look at the actual stats. Just for my reference, I have taken the actual number of hits during the sixth month of my Blogger site as 1 (As this was the lowest value available to me) and all the other months will reflect a scale which is proportional to this value.
Blogger WordPress
1st Month 2.03 3.70
2nd Month 3.16 5.16
3rd Month 1.58 2.77
4th Month 1.67 4.96
5th Month 1.35 4.87
6th Month 1.00 4.48
7th Month 1.35 5.19
8th Month 2.09 11.29
9th Month 2.29 12.58
10th Month 3.77 16.19
11th Month 3.51 18.09
12th Month 3.70 19.48
But I should also add that I had registered a free domain (www.destinationinfinity.co.nr – you can register your blog with a domain name and co.nr is a free service for doing so) for wordpress and promoted this with my small circle of friends and colleagues. This might have worked in favor of my WordPress stats as in the 8th month, you can see a sudden splurge of the stats in WordPress – That was the month when I emailed the above mentioned domain to all my colleagues and class mates and asked them to see. Also, in the Frequently Visited Sites Folder of my Google Reader, there are 13 WordPress Blogs when compared to 6 Blogspot ones. So, this could also have made a difference.
Google, which owns Blogger, gives a Page Rank of 4 for my WordPress site and N/A for my Blogger site, even though same content is present in both of them. Probably this might be due to a better community in WordPress and I could have received more links from my fellow WordPress users. But my friend says Blogger is better/liked by technical people like him (Also for technical blogs).
Destination Infinity
You could find similar articles in the Concepts and Ideas section of this blog.
It is a eye opener.It is awell compared and well compiled statement.thank you.
are u saying that i can post in chinese via blogspot without knowing how to write it?
A very detailed and effective comparison. The reason Blogger is preferred by developers is because of the level of customization it allows. I am also a developer, a novice though. But I prefer WordPress to blogger any day. Elegance sometimes has to be accepted. 🙂 Nice post.
Well, i too moved to wordpress from blogspot. tho i was not a very regular user of blogspot, i could see all the differences u've mentioned in this post, while i started using wordpress. good stats btw 🙂
This was a post I was waiting for! I am stunned to see these stats. I knew this ofcourse as I got hardly any hits while I was in blogger but got better readership in wp. But these stats are telling. The page rank is a mystery, but then I think page rank depends on many things, but need to study that aspect.
Also I personally avoid going to blogger blogs as its difficult to comment. So must be people like me who prefer going to wp blogs! 🙂
The difference in stats is startling. Bloggers have more options in designing the look of your blog but its a tiring process to put comments there.
This was one great "vs" post!
hmmm…i moved to wp from blogger…hits in blogger are very low,as it does not allow search engines nor does it have a page where top posts are displayed…
true blogger has more options in design,in fact i used to spend a lot of time on designing(trying to) 😛 but then i got frustrated as I never got any visitors ..so decided to move here about 8 months ago… 😀
@Faheem: Thanks Faheem. I learnt a lot while writing this post. I was clicking all the icons of the wordpress composer when I found an extra row of buttons appearing there. Useful features like Justify are there!
@Radha: I can post in Tamil or Hindi only if I know the language. You can type the local language word on the editor in english (Like Sawaal ka jawab) and it will convert this into Hindi script. There is an option in Blogger where you could do this. You should be able to blog in Chinese too I guess, if you know the Chinese words. I think this is called transliteration. But need to check.
@Anniyan: WordPress is more elegant. I should agree to that. But Blogger has some good features too. If I had decided to blog in either WordPress alone or Blogspot alone, maybe the stats of the respective site would be different and more. One blogger blogs in Rediffiland and gets about 25 comments from fellow Ilander's alone! Quality always matters.
@Su: I guess a lot of people have moved. And stats may not matter at the end of the day. It surely encourages you to write more.
Destination Infinity
@Nita: I think only you and Axinia knew about this beforehand! Even I don't understand the Page Rank concept. From the beginning my WordPress site was ranked higher. But both the sites have the same content. Maybe wordpress as a domain carries a higher ranking? But I really don't know. Some one who knows could share their views.
But there are some very good Blogger sites, Nita. After Blogger introduced the Open ID commenting, I was thinking whether I should continue with wordpress alone as now the traffic is diverted, with both. But then I decided against it as wordpress was getting good stats anyway and I am not going to do anything with a lot of stats!!
@Amit: I want to do one more 'vs' post, and will be out with it soon. It seems you can edit your CSS in blogger. Anybody has any idea on this?
@Vishesh: You are right about the search results. WordPress gets a lot of this kind of traffic. Also we get traffic from the tags. WordPress manages these two very well.
Destination Infinity
i feel that in addition to stats, the response to your posts in the form of comments, positive or negative, encourages one to write more! in other words, if maximum number of stats turn out to be responses, than just visits, you'd be elated to keep your blog up and running! 🙂
That is an important point you have raised. Is stats important at all? I can understand the importance of the comments as they give a powerful feedback of the posts and more comments mean more diverse views, and that helps. But is the stats in itself, as important as we bloggers (including me) think?
Destination Infinity
This line was pretty confusing –
> here are some glaring mistakes in my observations and you could add your own too
Do I add my mistakes too, here? :p
Jokes apart, I should say this is a quite a post.
My conceited comments follow 😉
* There are many 3rd party sidebar widgets for Blogger.
* Recent comments: You could use the RSS feed hack on the sidebar. This is what I do. Blogger has a widget to show feed items. Use that to subscribe to your own comment feed on the sidebar.
* With Blogger you could as well email your posts to publish. Also you could use the Blogger Data API to publish posts (in bulk usually) or to be used inside other client applications. I think WP supports other weblog clients via its XML-RPC APIs.
* PageRank is just another cog in the Google webpage ranking machinery[read: monster;)]. A site's rank is much more than what PageRank determines. WP does a better job of promoting by
auto-posting to blog aggregating services like Technorati, etc which Blogger doesn't. That could explain something about the popularity/ranking of WP blogs. One of the commenters have observed that Blogger does allow search engines crawlers. This is not entirely true in that there is an option in the Settings on Blogger dashboard which determines if the page is being crawled or not. This option is 'ON' by default – so Blogger does allow SE indexing.
* This is a non-techie's comparison of two most popular free blogging tools. This is both its plus and minus. While it discusses features like aesthetics and ease of customisation, it doesn't consider other important aspects like security, privacy, integration into other systems, other publishing mechanisms (eg. publishing directly from Google Docs) and lot more. While it will satisfy non-tech folks, it will hardly impress the other camp.
*This is one of those never ending wars a la –
Windows vs Linux
vi vs emacs
Debian vs Fedora
Gnome vs KDE
…
Sidenote: That's really a cagey way to compare stats – to give the ratio instead of giving away the actual numbers and embarrassing oneself. 😉 :p
-msr
i too crave for stats sometimes. that is when only 4-6 visits occur on a (bad) day. otherwise i'm happy most of the times if comments make up for the stats.
the feeling gets worse when i compare it with my friend's blog. I brought him to blogging, and his was a pretty unpopular blog till a couple of months back. but then, hits started to pour in suddenly and he was very happy. but later realised that even as the visits were high, the response was poor.
so, all i can say is, in the first glance, stats appear to say a grand story about a blog. But, its the response that keeps u happy at the end of the day 🙂
PS:I Think i'm pretty happy 😛
That's a great post with stats DI. I have started with WP so didn't know how blogger would have performed.. but now I could see the diff. through your post.. 🙂
Hi 🙂
Thanks for the detalied informative psot..I had always tried to know which one among the two is a better platform,for a simple user like me..In my experience,not as a blog owner,but as a visitor to other blogs,I find wordpress more easy to comment and has more readability..
Good day
@Kanagu: I think both have their plus and minus points. The third party widgets in blogger for example, could be directly applied from the site. But if you strictly look at stats, WordPress is better. And I feel wordpress has a better community too.
@Nimmy: Yes, even I find wordpress easy to comment, even from my cell phone. I find that wordpress users are more community oriented and networking well. But some of the debates, for me personally, happened in blogspot blogs.
Destination Infinity
Hi,
Thanks for visiting my blog 😀
I love this post on WP and blogger comparison. Some of my readers were anxious to know the reasons why i made this move. Thanks for the compilation of data, shall share this with my readers. Let me know if I can go ahead and link this post 😀 Email me please, thanks! I've added your blog on my blog roll, appreciate it likewise 🙂
Kiran
@Kiran: Thanks, I too liked the post you wrote on Malaysia. Why would I refuse the linking part, go ahead… I don't have a blogroll in this blog but will surely add it in my blogspot one when I update it next.
Destination Infinity
Good comparison, DI. I've used only WP and love it! Blogspot certainly seems to be more customisable with plenty of widgets but WP is cool! People seem to shift from Blogger to WordPress quite easily but I haven't come across someone who has gone the other way. Not yet. I don't know why.
@Raj: I think it is quite evident that the traffic is more for WP sites. But what I don't understand is, why is everyone obsessed about traffic (Including me!)? I understand, if some one wants more comments, but why more hits?
Destination Infinity
Same posts in two places!
Loved this very useful post. I have been keenly looking for such information because I have been undecided and lazy to shift to WP…
I am planning to give this a try..sounds like a fabulous idea!!
It is a good idea. Don't entirely go based on the stats. It seems Google doesn't like duplicate content and when I post simultaneously in WP and Blogger, it takes the Blogger page as a supplimental page (And hence the PR of NA till date for my blogger site!). Probably the lesser stats are because of this, which I came to know quite recently.
I am thinking whether to stop updating in Blogger and continue in WP only as the readers are split now! But it is a great experience posting in both and hence I am not taking that step. At the end of the day, what does stats mean to a hobby site? Not much. But I see different charecterestics with blogger commenters and WP commenters! So, I just wanna continue the exp. 🙂
Destination Infinity
I did it 🙂 Same content in two places- imported recent comments also, including some comments from today morning 🙂
http://indianhomemaker.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/j…
This is to thank you, because had not realised the old blog stays even when you shift all your posts & comments to a new place! I just didn't, (and still don't) have the heart to abandon the first blog 🙁 This will make it easier to move to WP blog.
That was fast, IHM! Before even I could reply to the first comment! Congratulations, and I think you can update both for some time…. But the title of your post seems intriguing (You have a talent of initiating a debate even out of technical topics, don't you??):-)
Destination Infinity
DI, This was extremely informative! the statistics seems totally in favour or WP. Although I have heard a lot of people saying that WP is better in terms of hits – this is the first proper analysis I have seen – with both the content in both blogger and WP being the same.
The traffic is more in WP because they manage Tags better and people reach your site through tags itself. I also think they do some content aggregation. And yes, WP has a great community and is community driven. It is a great option for non techie bloggers.
Destination Infinity
[…] it difficult to comment, specially from their cell phones. And then I read this helpful post by Destination Infinity where he mentions how he has two blogs one on Blogger and another one on Word Press and he updates […]
Reached here through comments on CB’s blog.
Very informative post. I see a lot of people moving to WordPress but did not know the reason. Now I know. I am fairly technical person but have difficulty making changes on Blogger.
WordPress is very good for personal blogs. But if you want something professional (or) want to monetize your blog, then self-hosted WP and Blogger are better (respectively).
Destination Infinity
I like wordpress more than blogger, wordpress feels a lot more clean.
WordPress has a lot of features that make it look better, and easy to use. Just what the new blogger wants. But beyond that, its either self hosted WP or Blogger.
Destination Infinity
I found this post as I looked for ways to cross post to a Blogger blog while migrating to a WordPress platform, and wanted to share my opinions, despite this being written some time ago.
Wordpress is definitely the way to go, regardless of whether your blog is personal or professional, and the options are ENDLESS for customization, plugins, sliders, photo galleries, stores, etc. If you haven’t found a solution for you desired effect or appearance, you haven’t looked far enough – keep going, they’re out there. WordPress continues to grow by the day in functionality and available plug-ins, and now can easily be converted to a store. Many professional sites run on a WordPress content manager backend, including ours. Over 850,000 people have downloaded just the store cart we use alone! Blogger is a great launch setup for someone new to blogging looking to get some exposure on their platform, but anyone serious about making their blog a heavily used item should without a doubt be using WordPress. Feel free to email me any questions you may have, and check out WordPress’ multiple forums for ideas as well.
hi DI,
guess u 4got about the no of languages supported in wordpress…it supports upto 60 languages.I havent used blogger.so not sure of languages supported by blogger.