When you want to start a blog, one of the first things you’ll need to decide is where you want to host it. The two most popular blogging platforms are Blogger and Wordpress.
CHOOSE A BLOGGING PLATFORM
Both Blogger and Wordpress have their own benefits and may be the best
choice for different people. For a thorough analysis of the pros and cons of
each, keep reading.
The Pros of Blogger
• It’s free: One of the most attractive benefits of Blogger is that,
unlike Wordpress, it’s free. You can monetize your Blogger site and
integrate Google Adsense, all with no cost.
• It’s easy to use: Blogger is made to be user-friendly. They have a
sleek interface with a limited number of pre-made themes to
choose from. You can make changes by simply dragging and
dropping things, so it’s easy to create a blog that looks great. This
can be an important benefit for people who are new to blogging.
• Maintenance: Blogger is owned by Google, and Google controls all
of the maintenance and technical details. You can keep things
simple and know that your website won’t be affected by any
technical problems.
• Security: Being owned by Google also means that Blogger blogs are
protected by Google’s strong security. They will keep blogs secure
and automatically back them up.
The Cons of Blogger
• Ownership: The main drawback of Blogger is that each blog on it is
owned by Google, not by you. They have ultimate control and can
choose to revoke your access or remove your blog at any time.
• Less flexibility: Blogger is made to be relatively simple and
therefore provides fewer options. You get just 1 GB of free space
(although that is enough for many users), and you only have a
limited selection of themes to choose from. There are no plugins, so
your options to customize your blog are limited.
• It’s difficult to move your site: If you ever want to move your site
to a different platform or domain name, it can be very difficult
(although possible) to move off of Blogger. In the process, you
might lose some readers and search engine rankings.
• Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of Blogger is that the blog is
never really yours. It is effectively hosted on Google’s website, and
thus they could come along one day and decide to shut down your
blog.
The Pros of Wordpress
• Ownership: Because a Wordpress blog is self-hosted on your own
website, you own and have complete control of your blog. Unlike
Blogger, nobody like Google can come along and delete your blog,
and you can do absolutely anything you want with it.
• Flexibility: Wordpress comes with a plethora of options, some of
which you have to pay for, but many of which are free. There are
thousands of themes to choose from, so you can give your blog any
look you want. There are also thousands of plugins available,
enabling you to add extra features to your site in any configuration
you want. In addition, you can set up whatever kinds of ads and
monetization you want.
• Stable future: WordPress is actually an open source system,
meaning that a whole community of users and developers control it.
Wordpress is also the most popular content management system.
Its popularity and widespread use means that it will definitely be
sticking around for a long time.
The Cons of Wordpress
• Cost: Unlike Blogger, a self-hosted Wordpress site is not free,
although it is not very expensive. First, you’ll need to purchase a
domain name (what you’ll use for your url), which usually doesn’t
cost much more than $10. You then need to choose somewhere to
host your site. You’ll pay for hosting monthly, and depending on
how much storage space and traffic you expect to need, hosting
usually costs between $3 and $20 a month.
• Harder Set-Up: Because you have so many more options, setting
up a WordPress blog is a little harder than a Blogger one, although
it’s still relatively straightforward. You’ll need to take some time to
choose your domain name, set up hosting, and construct your
pages. Templates and plugins can make this fairly easy, however,
even for the less technical of us.
• More maintenance work: On Wordpress, you are responsible for
backing up your site, security, and maintenance. Wordpress definitely has its security issues, although with the help of some
plugins and a little tweaking you can make your blog pretty secure,
providing that you update your site regularly. If you want more
information on Wordpress security then just Google ‘Wordpress
security’ and you should be able to find plenty of helpful
information.
Conclusion
Both Blogger and Wordpress can be strong platforms for blogging.
If you plan to take your blog seriously, Wordpress is probably the best
option for you. It grants you far more control and possibilities for
customization. When you’re trying to make money from your blog, this
can help a lot. You will also own all of your own content, without concern
that your site might be closed by Google outside of your control. For these
reasons, WordPress is usually the choice of experienced and professional
bloggers.
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