- Customization of design. Oh my god, designing the wordpress.com blog was tedious. First of all the customizer is GOD AWFUL SLOW. You don't have a way to preview your changes, they take effect immediately. If you want to change the template, it will change and mess up all your sidebar content. And guess what, you don't have the option of backing-up your old template! So extremely frustrating. I've heard many people say that the wordpress themes are a lot better, but frankly I like blogger. I'm able to change the width of my main posts and sidebar, I'm able to add on a blog signature without manually posting it everytime myself, I'm able to change and add my own CSS (big one right there). I think for someone who has absolutely no knowledge of CSS or HTML, wordpress may be easier, but since I do, I would like to have access to that! In conclusion, while they do allow a few minor modifications to their themes such as changing the background color, the header or the navigation menu, that’s about it. So your blog will end up looking like a lot of other blogs out there. It made my soul cry when I saw three other blogs on the same link-up with the exact same theme as me.
$99 dollars?! I think not. - Extras are expensive! Again, see above, to change my CSS, my fonts or colors, I need to pay $99 dollars!? Nope. Custom domain names, removing their third-party ads, more space, are all extra and EXPENSIVE. Much better option to self-host, which again, wasn't really my cup of tea.
- No Javascript or embedding. So wordpress.com does not allow any javascript. (No Rafflecopter! No SnapWidget!) In addition, they have funky limits on how you post certain things. For example, you can embed youtube or instagram, but you cannot use their embed codes. Wordpress.com developed a special code to insert these into your pages. Half the time when you tried to insert it using the "Add Media" button, the options wouldn't show up.
- Posting was weird. If you're using wordpress.com do you notice that you can make posts in their new or old WP admin? I wish they had just decided on which to use and made that final because sometimes it would open in their old post editor and sometimes in the new post editor.
- No advertising. All the details are here and yes, this is frustrating. I get that I don't really participate in this much now, but I would like the option to be available to me if and when I want to.
Yes, there are some shortcomings of blogger like
- No set-plugins. All though this avoidable because you can use third-party plugins! and simple gadgets.
- I will not own the content any more.
- Mobile layout sucks.
- Apparently inaccurate stats? The day I started the blog without even linking it to blogloving or my social media accounts and I think I had 78 views or something insane.
Anyways, so far I am loving it. I'm sure there will be things I get frustrated with about blogger but for now I am content! Please let me know if my content is linking incorrectly or photos are showing up funky.
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That's so interesting! I've never known anyone who has made the switch in that direction, but it totally makes sense! I'm a wordpress.org devotee but I agree that wordpress.com is pretty limiting!
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, I like that you have made the change to blogger. I have to use that I have never had a problem with blogger when I used it, I actually really enjoyed the easy dashboard and the easy overview of your followers which I do miss. I also found that the scheduler on blogger was much more reliable than WordPress, so far I haven't had one scheduled post go out as planned. Thank you for sharing your experiences on blogger vs. wordpress.com.
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