Thursday, October 21, 2010

Blogger versus Wordpress

So, I have a two blogs: one on Blogger and one on Wordpress. They are essentially a copy of each other. That's more true than you think because I actually post in one or the other and copy the post to one or the other. It's truly a pain in the ass.

Sometimes I reference previous posts and those references have to point to their respective links on each host. Otherwise, I'll be directing people form Blogger to Wordpress and vice versa. As far as images, in the past, I would upload to Blogger which is tied to my Gmail photo account and keep those references the same since the picture location never changed. I see lately though that Wordpress puts these images on their server somewhere because the link now has a Wordpress.com address in it.

In the past, I used to import from Blogger into Wordpress. It worked fantastically for some time and then one time I noticed the import looked fine but it somehow screwed up how the Blogger blog looked. My margins were jacked. The text was jacked. The images were jacked. Everything was way effed up! I couldn't handle the non-uniformity of it and had to created a "mirror" blog on Blogger. I copied and pasted almost all my posts...yes, one at a time...because I didn't know of a more efficient way or if there even was one.

So, longer story short. I just post in one and then copy and paste into the other because I don't want to screw up the formatting.

I am too cheap, and poor, to pay for web hosting and just have each service point to my server. I have used free server-type software for creating a basic website (only basic in the sense that I didn't put too much effort into it because I am always busy and can't dedicate a whole lot of time to it) where I could access my music, photos, random software and other stuff. I even was able to password protect the initial logon. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, back on track for the reason of this post...I don't understand why the two services can't play more nicely together or intergrate some of the other's features into their own. I know there is some tech or marketing guy from each company that has created an account on the other company's product where they can get the user's view to steal implement new ideas.

I actually started on Blogger. I guess it was actually MySpace but I used it just to browse random "spaces" and connect with family/friends but it was just too convoluted. The way people would upload so much extraneous shit into their MySpace page like music, videos, and pictures made their page load painfully slow. I ended up creating accounts across many mediums because in my job we (I) need to stay abreast of ways to market and communicate to a wide variety of people in the cheapest and easist way.

The simplicity of Blogger is why I selected them for a personal site. There was Typepad and some others but I just like the ease of learning and using with Blogger. Word for Blogger was another awesome idea and then blogging via email was a step in the right direction.

Then I found Wordpress. It was different and a little niftier in the admin side. I saw that email to Wordpress was possible although sometimes it is hit or miss for me. I think it's because it doesn't like it if I put my Wordpress posting email second or if it likes to be alone period! But why would I want to send the same post via email twice when I would think multiple TOs on my Blackberry would be enough.

Anyway, I like the many different templates you can use/get for Blogger. I like how you can customize the coding as well to add hit counters, links, among other things. Wordpress doesn't allow this level of customization with their free version. Which is ridiculous to pay for me to add things in. Luckily, Wordpress has the stats in the dashboard which is a fantastic tool. I haven't dove very deeply into it but what I've used and clicked on is quite informative. I wish Blogger had this as part of their program.

Again, for me, there are likes and dislikes from both of them. I just wish they would implement the same tools or at least their version of a tool.

To bring my rant to a close, I have a Blogger and a Wordpress address for the same exact blog. If anyone is happy with the import into Wordpress, if it's been improved and won't jack up my Blogger pages, please let me know. I would much better import from one to the other than copy and paste entire posts at a time...although copy/paste makes me update it sooner/quicker than importing. If anyone has ideas on how to use one to "feed" off the other like if it was hosted somewhere else...I don't know the correct jargon, please let me know.

Simplicity is the key for me. Thanks!

No comments: