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WordPress VS Blogger: The Big Debate

After a few book blogs were deleted by Blogger the other day, it’s really kicked the Blogger blogosphere into thinking about switching to WordPress.
I’m certainly in the process of deciding whether to change myself at the moment and so I thought I would write a quick post about some of the things that are going through my head at the moment.
I always thought that Blogger was safe and I’ve always felt comfort in using it but lately it’s been getting on my nerves a little bit. 
Last night, I had to wait for over an hour to write a blog post because of the error messages that kept popping up every time I logged in to my dashboard. By the time that it was actually working again, I wasn’t in the mood to write anything and this annoys me so much: my blog posts are one of the only things that I feel have to be written and scheduled ahead of time; normally I’m very disorganised!
The feeling was so irritating and I put so much work into my posts that I don’t feel like writing them at half nine at night when I’m tired and want to throw things at Blogger. It just won’t work!
One of the things that worries me the most about switching to WordPress is that I’ll lose everything I’ve done over the past year. Switching would be something that I did completely on my own and so it just worries me that I won’t be able to handle it all.
Another thing that worries me is that WordPress won’t reflect the feel of my blog. Is that a weird thing to say? Probably. When I think of my blog, I think of it in a certain way and I’m afraid that if I move to WordPress this will change. I’m not very good with change! 
If I were to change, I would want to use WordPress.org which allows you to own the site yourself. I’d like to think that I owned my blog now, but sadly this is not the case. With Blogger, your whole blog is owned by the site and they can take it down without any notice. This is what happened to the book bloggers and it makes me sick to think that the same thing could happen to me. All that work that we put in! 


I’d love to know what you think on this matter. Have you changed? Are you thinking of it? 

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13 Comments

  • Reply
    Jaz
    13 July, 2013 at 2:37 pm

    I’m considering this change as well. However, I don’t post enough for it to be worth it to switch to self-hosted.

    WP IS definitely better if you’re going with self-hosted provided you use a good hosting service.

    You can pretty much take all your current posts and images/blog layout with you to WP though so I’m sure it’ll still feel the same!

    Errors on Blogger dashboard are actually usually caused by a poor connection to the Internet so Blogger fails to autosave. That’s the case for me anyway.

    There are heaps of Google tutorials out there to help you, and better yet Twitter!

    I hope that whatever decision you go with works out (:

  • Reply
    Jesse Owen
    13 July, 2013 at 2:51 pm

    I’ll start this (possibly quite long comment) by saying I’m shocked that Google has been deleting blogs – they wouldn’t take the move lightly as a deletion of a Blogger blog means a potential loss of earnings (for blogs that use adsense). Normally it would be for breaking terms and conditions – the most likely cause being copyright infringement but I would expect an email in advance to give the blogger an opportunity to correct it.

    On a slight note here – all hosts have the power to delete accounts for breaking the terms and conditions like these but most like I said would try and work with you to resolve the issue before taking this kind of drastic action.

    With that out of the way – I’ll now put my WordPress hat on – it is a fantastic platform (the flexibility WordPress offers in terms of the plugins and theme options – a large number of which are completely free of charge).

    As you say with the self hosted version of WordPress you do own the site but you still have to actually host it somewhere (and so you will need a domain name and host). These don’t need to be expensive, WordPress doesn’t take up much space but does have some requirements – mine costs about £35 a year + domain name at around £7 for 2 years.

    A note on switching – you won’t loose everything you’ve built so far by switching but there are considerations – GFC isn’t available outside of Blogger so you would need to ask anyone solely using GFC to re-subscribe using something like BlogLovin.

    Posts and comments can be exported from Blogger and imported into WordPress.

    The whole process of switching especially to a self hosted version of WordPress can be a little stressful – I’d personally recommend setting up a free WordPress.com account and having a play with it first (the two versions are almost identical) – some people get a little bit daunted by the amount of features of WordPress (many of which you don’t really need to know about) when you’re just getting started but I think it’s a good idea to get to know the software first before making a big decision to switch!

    I hope this is helpful – and good luck whatever you choose!

    • Reply
      Jack Dwyer
      13 July, 2013 at 11:53 pm

      Can’t beat this comment, plus you now already what my thoughts are. It’s simple, and I’d be glad to help! Happy switching!

    • Reply
      Jack Dwyer
      13 July, 2013 at 11:53 pm

      *know

  • Reply
    Faye (Daydreaming_Star)
    13 July, 2013 at 2:56 pm

    I went through a similiar problem with blogger when I started thinking about changing to WordPress this time last year. It took me six months to finally make the move but I have not looked back since. WordPress allows you to own everything and I have not have had any issues with scheduling posts or anything.

    It’s a stressful to move with all the new themes and things but I would definitely be happy to help out as much as I can. And I would also recommend my self-hosting platform as they’re UK based, cheaper than most and just really helpful. I have had no issues with them either!

    Basically, I would highly recommend switching.

  • Reply
    Frenchie4800
    13 July, 2013 at 3:30 pm

    I didn’t know that happened before reading your post. Thanks for warning me. I think wordpress is definitely better for being self-hosted and I guess if I moved to wordpress it wouldn’t be to bad for me because I just started blogging. It does make me worried that they can just take it down so easily. Do you know why they did???

  • Reply
    Jess Hearts Books!
    13 July, 2013 at 5:08 pm

    I hadn’t heard of the blogs being deleted and that is very worrying. I’ve been blogging on blogger for three years now and find it easy to use and without any problems so WordPress isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about or looked into. Whatever you decide to do I hope it’s the right decision for you! 🙂

  • Reply
    Grace Fonseca
    13 July, 2013 at 6:26 pm

    It’s not that big of a deal. I made the switch and am here now:

    http://gracebooksoflove.com

    I moved all my posts. It looks basic now, but I like it. I’m doing self-hosted now since they like to apparently delete blogs when they feel like it. Self hosting is worth it to me because I want total control.

    Grace

  • Reply
    Hollie
    13 July, 2013 at 7:27 pm

    Well, you know that I’ve just made the decision to make the move to WordPress soon! I’m sure if we both go through with it we’ll be kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner. I’m still kind of intimidated by the move itself, but it’s nice knowing that people wouldn’t have done it themselves if it was too difficult to do. 😀

  • Reply
    Zoe Crook
    13 July, 2013 at 8:57 pm

    I have so much to say about this, so I might to a blog post too. It makes me really upset that Blogger could delete our blogs at any moment. My blog has changed my life – if I didn’t start a blog and meet so many amazing people, I would have probably given up reading. And my dream of being an author. Even if I gave up blogging, I wouldn’t stop reading, but I don’t want to stop blogging! If Bookhi disappeared tomorrow I’d be so angry 🙁

    If I change to WordPress (which will probably happen) that I’ll transport all my posts so I don’t have to start again. We also have more freedom in the design. The only reason why I don’t want to change is because of my GFC followers. I’ve worked so hard to gain all of them.

    Thanks for sharing, Lucy! Let me know if you change to WP!

  • Reply
    Pink Lady 631
    14 July, 2013 at 11:49 am

    I agree in the aspect that I would like to hope I own my blog, not blogger. But it seems that’s not the case. It’s quite worrying that blogger could suddenly delete all the hours of dedication and I would hate for that to happen. I think I’m always going to be a blogger girl as I just can’t imagine me being on WordPress or dealing with the stress of it all. But I completely understand why that’s a good option, Good Luck 😀

    – Sunny @ A Sunny Spot Blog

  • Reply
    theflutterbyroom.com
    15 July, 2013 at 11:52 am

    Don’t know if this will help you or not, but Giselle of Xpresso Reads talks about her recent move from Blogger to WordPress here: http://www.xpressoreads.com/2013/07/i-moved-and-you-can-too-a-giveaway.html

  • Reply
    prettybooks
    16 July, 2013 at 11:16 am

    I cannot add too much to the discussion as I’ve never used Blogger – I signed up, played around with it a bit, but really didn’t like it – but I love WordPress. It’s so easy to use and I’ve never had a major issue with it (aside from the randomly putting people’s comments in spam if they use a Blogspot URL!). I was surprised to find that most book bloggers used Blogger and I wish that more people used WP! I hope the transition goes well, if you do move.

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