Saturday, March 7, 2009

WordPress vs Blogger vs LiveJournal


WordPress, Blogger (blogspot) and LiveJournal are all blog-services that are free, allow users to input text, and are community driven and thus have privacy features.


Having used all three blog-services, I must say that out of WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, WordPress is best suited for my needs. Now I know I’m saying this ‘in’ WordPress, and so it looks like I’m sucking up, but actually I’ve found that WordPress, primarily because of it’s categories is more user-friendly for writing.


But let me give a more detailed explanation.


Blogger.com (Blogspot)


Blogger.com was the first blog-service I used. It was free, it was associated with Google (a company that I respect), and it offered me html editing (a feature that I really enjoyed using). But when I started using it for writing, I found that I really needed to categorise my work. Meaning, even if my blog was about one major topic, let’s say Linux, I wanted categories, like distributions, helps, reviews etc. Plus I also wanted to highlight a key post, something that would be accessible for all viewers easily. The way I worked around these needs to was to extend the links on the side, making special links for the posts I wanted highlighted. I also tried talking about one category in a month, so that the entire month becomes one category! It wasn’t that I would have stopped blogging if I didn’t get categories, but definitely I knew I needed them. I enjoyed blogspot, but something was missing. I knew it. (latest update: unconfirmed reports suggest that blogger now has categories)


WordPress.com


Enter WordPress! I saw wordpress.com in action when another beginner blogger needed my help to edit his wordpress blog. When I saw his blog, I immediately wanted it. I must honestly admit that I was attracted by the blogstats! (It was so cool that it was part of the standard feature). But when I saw categories, I was floored!!! In fact, I thought it was a paid site because it offered so many things that I needed.


As soon as I helped him out (I had never seen/used WordPress before, but it was pretty simple to use). I went to my own computer, registered and to my utter amazement I saw the feature to import blogs! Earlier the only thing stopping me from changing would have been the fact that I would loose all my earlier work. But the attraction of categories especially was so high I was willing to sacrifice older posts, just to start blogging in a new (more organised) world. But with the import feature I was able to import all three of my blogger.com blogs without too much problem. The only thing that happened was that because blogger and WordPress use images differently, I had to correct the links of a few of my photographs. Since my blogs are primarily text based, I found that not so bad.


Another feature that I really liked in WordPress was the ability to make static pages. This solved my problem for standard pages that I want everyone to be able to access. So for instance, this site has “which linux?” is on a separate page; it is a helpful quick-access page.


Then again, I really like the akismet spam protection… that protects my blogs by default. In my blogger.com account, I received only about 5 spam messages… which is not so bad considering that my site is not that important, but at WordPress it has already blocked a few spam messages without me bothering too much. Nice.


I was also impressed by the WordPress’ dashboard that was more user-friendly (and more feature rich) than blogger’s dashboard. In fact, initially I preferred blogger’s dashboard because it was simpler… but I’ve come to love WordPress’ dashboards and features.


Finally, I was complete impressed that wordpress.com is built with WordPress software which is open-source… both free and free! Wow, now this is a great example of a quality open-source product that I would certainly love to be associated with!


After all this (and more), I was entirely sold out to WordPress.


As I continued using WordPress, one thing I really missed (from my blogger.com days) was the ability to edit my page (CSS and all). Editing my page was something I really enjoyed in blogger.com and wish I could have it in WordPress.


To WordPress’ credit, it was offered user-friendly template changes which are non-destructive… which mean that when I change a template, it preserves my previous link customization. For those who have used blogger.com know that when you change a template you lose all your changes. To workaround, you need to have a copy of your relevant changes in a text file, and paste accordingly. This is unnecessary in WordPress that allows you to experiment in its limited but nice template range.


Another thing I missed was the ability to post through email. Blogger.com offers a helpful feature, where you have a unique email address for each post, and then, you just need to email your uploads. WordPress sadly doesn’t have this… maybe later it will.


Yet another thing I missed in WordPress was the ability to search other blogs from within the top-bar of blogger.com. In WordPress, while the search feature in our blogs are quite helpful (and better suited than on the top-bar in blogger), still I miss the ability to browse other sites.


LiveJournal.com


As time has gone by I’ve found that I’m also veering towards Community Blogging. For that the issue of private/user oriented blogs have come. I was told (through articles etc) that LiveJournal has good community oriented blogging support. Both blogger and wordpress offer users with varying rights (administrator, editor, user etc) so I was curious what addition did LiveJournal have to make community blogging better.


I registered and in comparison to both blogger and WordPress I found LiveJournal cluttered and effect-heavy. It reminded me of MySpace, Yahoo 360 etc. Not something that I wanted for my community driven site.


As it turns out, LiveJournal is actually very geared towards community blogging, with ‘friends’ links all over the place. It has cute icon driven editing sites, but from the looks of it, it’s got a pretty standard look. But the key thing that put me off… ADS! To add to their cluttered look, I had to deal with their advertising. I understand that these services, are services, but when it comes to ad-free to with-ads, I can’t even think of using LiveJournal that does such a tacky job with ad-placement. (latest update: recently, LiveJournal revamped it’s look and ad-placement and the site is looking neater. But if you hate ads (especially ones that you are not directly benefiting from), you will never like wherever they put them).


I also didn’t enjoy using LiveJournal and quickly abandoned my blog there and urged my “community” to shift to WordPress instead. We’re primarily text driven, so maybe WordPress is best for that.


Perhaps LiveJournal and other blog-services are better suited for more video-music-picture sharing sites… and for that aspect I’m not sure whether WordPress matches up or not.


Summary: I return to my initial statement. Of the three popular blog-services I’ve used, I’ve found WordPress by far the best to suit my needs. It is organised, simple/user-friendly, growing in features… AND open source. There’s not much more that I need.


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OTHER VOICES


I guess in a WordPress blog, you might probably expect a pro-WordPress review. However, I just read a post of someone leaving WordPress and moving to Blogspot. The main reasons seem to be the ability to edit CSS (layout) and the ability to have Adsense (the Google-based ad programme). This Adsense thing is really important to some people but WordPress doesn’t allow it. Another reason the author gives is that WordPress is a closed community, ie. ties you to WordPress blogs. While I know that is not true, because google recognises WordPress blogs, I still find myself going to other WordPress blogs more. So I guess some of his criticism is founded. The post is found here: http://dirkgently.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/im-leaving-wordpresscom/


For other opinions see: This post which is more studied (research oriented) and very informative, people might find this more useful: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/page5516.cfm And this post http://www.bloggingchannel.com/free-blogging-site.html has a simpler pro-WordPress studied explanation.

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