www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Blogger vs. Wordpress
While this post gives me the opportunity to link to the new home of Gwaendar's Altitis, the real subject is "moving your blog". Apparently over the last couple of weeks a couple of MMO bloggers moved from Blogger to Wordpress. One cited reason is that due to recent changes of the Blogger comment system, commenters can only link back to their own blogs if that blog is from Blogger. You can post comments under a non-Blogger nickname, but the field that linked that nickname to an URL was removed to prevent spam links. Wordpress doesn't have that restriction.
Now while I'm not happy about that change to Blogger either, I wouldn't move my blog because of that. The problem is that I have a Google pagerank of 5 with my Blogger front page, and about 60% of my traffic comes from search engines. And unlike Ogrebear, I found by Google analytics that the people who arrive at my blog via a search engine nearly exclusively were actually searching for the kind of information I'm providing. On my top 100 search terms there is only one objectionable one: "s i m s p o r n" (excuse the spaces, I just don't want to increase the number of hits I get on this), because of a piece I once wrote about the nonsense of blurring things that aren't even there. All others are about games or at least about computers, linking to the posts where I write about my hardware. If I moved my blog, my pagerank would disappear, and people wouldn't be able to find me, nor the information they were looking for in my blog.
So the only thing I can offer is pointing out again that paragraph 6 of my Terms of Service specifically allow you to sign your comments with a link back to your blog. It's a bit complicated, because you need to use proper HTML code to do it, but I recommend writing that code once into a text file and using copy & paste to sign with it.
I'm not expert enough to say whether Wordpress is really better than Blogger, I haven't even tried it. But if you are thinking of creating your own blog, I'd recommend to try the different possibilities first. If you move later, you'll inevitably lose part of your traffic.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:39 AM Permanent Link
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i tried a wordpress free acount and i just cant eat the interface for posting and personalize the blog
Blogger is a great platform for discovering blogging, and it does really good providing a KISS (Keep It Simple, S...onny) experience. As far as I'm concerned, the change in the profile part was simply what tipped me over, there had been several minor things irritating me over time. Once the sum of these passed a certain threshold, I moved.
I had between 200 and 400 visits a day before and 80ish subscriber to my feedburner feed. That made it relatively easy for me to change. What I really lost in the process is technorati authority, but for my own purpose, the move made and still makes sense.
But each blog is different. If you're just starting out and don't want to go to self-hosting straight off the bat, Blogger gives you access to your templates whereas wordpess.com doesn't. Considering you may want to tweak things over time (for instance adding item popups), blogger gives you more flexibility and good usability than hosted wordpress.
If you're an established blog, whether to stay or to move is something which you will have to think about in your own context. For my own purpose the choice was a good one, but every context is different.
I had between 200 and 400 visits a day before and 80ish subscriber to my feedburner feed. That made it relatively easy for me to change. What I really lost in the process is technorati authority, but for my own purpose, the move made and still makes sense.
But each blog is different. If you're just starting out and don't want to go to self-hosting straight off the bat, Blogger gives you access to your templates whereas wordpess.com doesn't. Considering you may want to tweak things over time (for instance adding item popups), blogger gives you more flexibility and good usability than hosted wordpress.
If you're an established blog, whether to stay or to move is something which you will have to think about in your own context. For my own purpose the choice was a good one, but every context is different.
Wordpress and hosting your own stuff pretty much goes against the reasons I blog with blogger. Blogger is simple, easy to customize, and takes care of most of the details for me.
Moving would really take the fun out of blogging for me.
Moving would really take the fun out of blogging for me.
i did make the move to wordpress about a week or two ago. although my blog was pretty new so it was an easier call then you would have.
i liked blogger, don't get me wrong. unlike other opinions stated here i actually liked wordpress's templates better and the ability to add "pages" was a plus.
wordpress made the move easy too, all i did was give them my blogger info and they imported all the data in 1 shot. comments, news, categories. that was really nice.
i liked blogger, don't get me wrong. unlike other opinions stated here i actually liked wordpress's templates better and the ability to add "pages" was a plus.
wordpress made the move easy too, all i did was give them my blogger info and they imported all the data in 1 shot. comments, news, categories. that was really nice.
It's understandable if you have built up a reputation on a single Url and moving could cause allot of hassles for rankings and search engine (especially as you get most of your hits from it).
But I just prefer the scalability of wordpress that is hosted by my own domain, I can do other stuff on the domain as well as blog from time to time with my inane ramblings.
But I just prefer the scalability of wordpress that is hosted by my own domain, I can do other stuff on the domain as well as blog from time to time with my inane ramblings.
@heartless, just an fyi wordpress.com is hosted by them and free. i think you might be thinking of the wordpress software to put on your own server? that's different. wordpress.com (not org) is like blogger. you sign up, and they take care of everything for you (hosting, content tool, image uploader, etc.).
A Blizzard dev has just confirmed that they are working on an unnamed non wow mmorpg.
Shocking news, I know )
Shocking news, I know )
# posted by 
: 13/12/07 15:49
: 13/12/07 15:49
that probably explains the lack of innovation in BC. If they admitted it now that means thier best and brightest were off to the new race probably a year or so ago. Leaving the old cash cow behind for the tier 2 team to milk to death.
Funny that it would just get thrown out there. It also will take some attention away from SC2.
# posted by : 13/12/07 18:05
: 13/12/07 18:05
Well for that week i had about 300 search terms. I only look at the first 100 and there all eq2 related except for that 1 that was near the top.
Can't you do a permanent redirect to a new blog page and keep your ranking? I'm not sure.
# posted by : 14/12/07 05:28
: 14/12/07 05:28
The ONE issue I've been having with Blogger which is making me think about switching over to Wordpress is...
Say you're on a blog's older posts, 10 pages back. Once you click on a picture to enlarge it and then press back again, it brings you back to the index/front page. This is ANNOYING to the max. Same thing goes for those who don't enable the comment box to pop-up. Do you know if this is just a bug or has blogger switched to this way of doing things permanently?
Say you're on a blog's older posts, 10 pages back. Once you click on a picture to enlarge it and then press back again, it brings you back to the index/front page. This is ANNOYING to the max. Same thing goes for those who don't enable the comment box to pop-up. Do you know if this is just a bug or has blogger switched to this way of doing things permanently?
# posted by : 15/12/07 14:50
: 15/12/07 14:50
The main advantage of WordPress is that it is far more versatile.
Taking advantage of all that versatility requires hosting it yourself.
The advantage of blogger is that their tools are far superior - an advantage that currently requires not hosting it yourself in order to fully take advantage of.
If I moved my blog, my pagerank would disappear, and people wouldn't be able to find me, nor the information they were looking for in my blog.
You can import all of your blogger posts into WordPress, and using Google's webmaster tools would ensure that the only search engine that matters was immediately up-to-date.
You'd get your pagerank back to 5 practically over night.
Mine went from 5 to 4 and stayed there, but I was just on the edge of 5 and a couple popular sites never updated their links to point to the new URL (which would most likely really only take an email request to fix, if I weren't so lazy).
'Course, there's also the option of just leaving everything on blogger up to the date you move as a sort of "archives"=site, with a final "I am over here now"-post.
Advantage there is you wind-up with two pagerank 5 blogs, though getting the second on up to 5 will take a *little* longer, it won't take long, and if people can find this site then they'll be able to find your new one.
So, I wouldn't let that dissuade you moving over to it - but also would recommend moving over to it unless there's some of that versatility-stuff you really, really want, or you're just itching for a change.
But if that's the case, your blog is popular enough that you ought to shop it around for an MMO site to sponsor/host it for you (for pay, that is).
Taking advantage of all that versatility requires hosting it yourself.
The advantage of blogger is that their tools are far superior - an advantage that currently requires not hosting it yourself in order to fully take advantage of.
If I moved my blog, my pagerank would disappear, and people wouldn't be able to find me, nor the information they were looking for in my blog.
You can import all of your blogger posts into WordPress, and using Google's webmaster tools would ensure that the only search engine that matters was immediately up-to-date.
You'd get your pagerank back to 5 practically over night.
Mine went from 5 to 4 and stayed there, but I was just on the edge of 5 and a couple popular sites never updated their links to point to the new URL (which would most likely really only take an email request to fix, if I weren't so lazy).
'Course, there's also the option of just leaving everything on blogger up to the date you move as a sort of "archives"=site, with a final "I am over here now"-post.
Advantage there is you wind-up with two pagerank 5 blogs, though getting the second on up to 5 will take a *little* longer, it won't take long, and if people can find this site then they'll be able to find your new one.
So, I wouldn't let that dissuade you moving over to it - but also would recommend moving over to it unless there's some of that versatility-stuff you really, really want, or you're just itching for a change.
But if that's the case, your blog is popular enough that you ought to shop it around for an MMO site to sponsor/host it for you (for pay, that is).
I personally strongly recommend hosting any substantial blog not on a service, but on your own server (whether via shared hosting package, co-located, or whatever).
The main reason for this is exactly your caveat Tobold: when you control your own server and thus your own URLs, you can change software WITHOUT losing any traffic, google-ranks, or whatever. There are many solutions to remap URLs with permanent redirects that are supported by every search-engine, browser, etc..
The difference of course, is that just using Blogger or Wordpress.com is free, but it's the kind of free that doesn't equal freedom. =P
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The main reason for this is exactly your caveat Tobold: when you control your own server and thus your own URLs, you can change software WITHOUT losing any traffic, google-ranks, or whatever. There are many solutions to remap URLs with permanent redirects that are supported by every search-engine, browser, etc..
The difference of course, is that just using Blogger or Wordpress.com is free, but it's the kind of free that doesn't equal freedom. =P
# posted by : 17/12/07 22:42
: 17/12/07 22:42<< Home
