Elliot Lee

I’ve lately been thinking a lot about how to get more people blogging. I’m really convinced about the benefits [gunthers.org] of blogging, as I’ve said before. But how do you get started, especially with no technical background? There are two great choices for people who don’t want to have to deal with hosting their own blog: WordPress and Blogger.

This came to mind today because I realized just how much Blogger’s templating and hosting system has improved. Previously, you could have your blog hosted by them on BlogSpot, or host it yourself on your own server. Hosting it on your own server meant that their server has to use FTP to upload the static files. This means constant rebuilding and republishing, and it’s really slow and annoying.

But now they have new options, and they’re all totally free. (This is unlike WordPress.com, which charges some fee for domain hosting.) And I think only Google can truly afford this long-term, because they run the advertising network (AdSense) and they take a cut of everyone’s AdSense earnings to keep the company– including Blogger– running. The new option for hosting which totally changes everything is custom domain hosting. The really great part is that this works with any hosting service you’re using. It works with an unlimited number of blogs, and Google takes care of everything. Just add a CNAME record to your DNS settings (DreamHost supports this perfectly).

It’s a really tough choice. Each has pros and cons, so I’ll list a few here so you can make the right decision for yourself.

WordPress

• + Better-looking and more variety of templates
• + Cool design and slick interface
• + Excellent stats included
• + Cutting-edge of blogging
• - Domain hosting costs money
• - Reliability of company (Matt Mullenweg / Automattic) is not quite as good as Google
• - No built-in AdSense support AdSense is not allowed, period.

Blogger

• + Easy template customization in the new Blogger template system
• + Custom domain hosting for free
• + Also offers FTP and BlogSpot hosting
• + Supported by Google and integrates with AdSense, so you know you’re in good hands
• - Limited template selection. And the ones they have don’t look good anymore
• - No stats included, but try Google Analytics. But still no per-post traffic history
• - Feels dated. Blogger has been around 5+ years

What’s your pick?

P.S. Take a look at Web Culture and Society and Computer Software and Robotics. They’re side-blogs of mine which I just moved to custom Blogger-hosted subdomains.

• Blogger Improvements
• Domain Name & Web Hosting FAQ
• Blogger subdomains
• Google Groups Dead
• Custom Fields to Set Chitika Queries
• WordPress 1.5 Released
• WordPress Hosting
• What’s Newsvine?
• Stopping Fraudulent Spam with SPF
• WordPress.com is down