SO, I’ve been visiting a lot of other blogs lately. I found some really cool challenges, but I also found a lot of people moving from Blogger to WordPress (the self hosted one). That got me thinking… Should I switch and is it worth it?
Why Blogger?
Right now, this blog is hosted by Blogger. You can tell by the .blopspot. The main reason why it is hosted by Blogger is well, Blogger hosts your blog for free. And I’m on a budget of $0 meaning everything free is the only thing I can afford right now. Plus you can edit your HTML. All that is great except for the fact that Blogger/Google has control of your blog. It is known to yank blogs off the internet because it decided the blogs were spam or something. I’ve seen it happen to other blogs. I also can’t afford for it to happen to me. But Blogger isn’t the only free blog host… There’s also WordPress.com.
So why not WordPress.com?
That is a no brainer (to me at least). If you aren’t going to use WordPress to self host your blog you shouldn’t use it at all. I have tried. Trust me I did. But it only frustrated me. Unlike Blogger, WordPress.com (the free one) does not let to edit HTML and customize your template fully – in order to do that you have to pay an extra fee. And while it might seem like it has a lot more (and I mean A LOT more) templates to choose from, some of them are “premium” meaning you have to pay for them. Basically, in order to be really satisfied on WordPress.com is if you spend some of the money that you are saving up to use to self host your blog (or go shopping…). That is the reason why I like Blogger better. However, by switching to WordPress.com, you do get to avoid Blogger’s problem of pulling down blogs. If the inability to fully customize your template doesn’t bother you, maybe WordPress.com is the right thing for you.
But then there is WordPress.org…
The thing about the self hosted WordPress is that I don’t really know a lot about it – you can’t really try it without paying. But I have heard a lot of people praise WordPress.org countless of times. Some even went as far to say that the only thing that could lure them back to Blogger/WordPress.com was that if they were broke or close to becoming broke. Apparently, with the self hosted WordPress, not only can you customize your template like you can in Blogger, but you also have access to a lot of plugins designed to make your life easier. Very, very tempting, but like I said, I don’t have the money for it.
Present and Future
For now, I’m going to keep hosting my blog for free on Blogger. You couldn’t pay me to switch to WordPress.com (I had a hard time using it for a school project…), but you definitely could pay me to switch to self hosting my blog on WordPress. That’s what I’m going to aim for in the future. Once I get enough money to spare of course… and getting my mom to agree (that’s the hard part. Sigh.). So if you, sometime in the far away future find me on WordPress, you know why.
I know what you mean. We’re with blogger too and I’m constantly terrified that something will happen to our blog. Obviously we don’t spam but if they delete it, even as a mistake, there’s nothing you can do about. However, we’re also broke so we’re not interested in paying money. I didn’t know about the difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com so I think that was very interesting- thanks for sharing!
-P.E. @ The Sirenic Codex
That’s what I’m afraid of too. But I don’t have the money (or the time) to switch to self hosted. Plus wordpress.com and I just don’t agree… Thanks for visiting! 🙂
I so agree, WordPress.com was like the bane of my existence. I tried to start my blog out on it and got so frustrated, it was so hard to understand! I recently just buckled down and switched (I paid someone to migrate my site for me, what a waste a money) and I LOVE WordPress. You probably hear that from everyone but since I once was you and refused to switch, I hope that opinion means something. If you can follow directions well, I would suggest doing the move yourself by watching or reading tutorials. I wish I had done that. Good luck! 🙂
Alise @ Readers in Wonderland
Now, I really really want to switch to WordPress. I wish I could right now, but I don’t have the money. I never really thought of switching by myself though. I’m always afraid that if I do make the switch, I’ll mess something up. Thanks for visiting! 🙂