I’ve been asked several times about wordpress. I’ve had people ask me how it compares to blogger, as well as how I like it in general.
I love blogging. I started my first blog back in 2002. I was a freshman in college, and my friend Molly thought we (our group of friends) should all start blogs, so we did. I loved it. Back then my blog was much more of a Doogie Howser type journal. I did not realize the networking potential behind blogs. I followed the blogs of my real life friends, and that was that.
Fast-forward 8 years, I still blog, but it’s much different. While I do use this blog to chronicle my family, it’s not a diary or a journal. It’s a place to share, and archive. I use it as a tool to interact with others. As a matter of fact, of all the blogs I follow, I only know one of the authors in real life. For the most part I use blogs to interact with people I don’t know. To learn new things. To share experiences. To have a voice. To have an escape.
That very first blog i had was on a platform called Journalspace. It was popular in it’s day, however it no longer exists, and it’s demise can serve as a lesson to ALL BLOGGERS. Journalspace was hacked, all of the files and BACKUPS were deleted, and all journalspace blogs are now gone forever. This was my primary reason for setting my blog up on my own domain using my own server (well, I pay a private company).
Back to WordPress. I use wordpress, but I don’t have a yourname.wordpress.com blog. What I have done is purchased my own domain, purchased my own web hosting service, and then I installed wordpress software on my blog. While my blog is technically a “wordpress” blog, I control all backups, and I have near full customization ability.
With wordpress I’ve heard people (blogger users) complain that you can’t customize wordpress. I’d argue to the contrary. You CAN customize just about EVERYTHING in wordpress. Truth is these customizations might not always be easy, and finding the right theme to install may be daunting for some, it’s well worth any effort. Below are some links to wordpress blogs that have been customized. Some of these customizations were done by the blog authors, while some of the authors hired people to customize their blog for them:
Angry Julie (customized by Judith Shakes)
Newleyweds (customized by 5 J’s Design)
I customized my own wordpress blog using the Thesis Theme. All in all I assure you that wordpress blogs can be customized, and they can look beautiful!
In addition, with wordpress, you can install plugins and widgets. You can used these to track visitors, customize your sidebar, change fonts, add fields, etc. It seems as if the possibilities are endless!
With wordpress you can automatically create static pages for all your posts, which is great for archival and link purposes. In addition, you can add PAGES to your blog to help you build more than just a blog. By adding pages and customizing content, your blog runs more like a full website.
When hosting your wordpress blog on your own domain, you can host all of your own images, not having to go through picassa or flickr (although you could if you really wanted to). I’ve found that by hosting my own images and tagging accordingly, I’ve gained traffic from image searches. In all honesty, I think this is important because I found 3 of my favorite blogs this way! In addition, I don’t have to worry that Picassa or Flickr could go down, or change something, thus losing the images in my posts. My images are truly mine, and I gain much security through this.
If you are currently using blogger, or another platform, you can easily transfer your blog to wordpress, and I highly encourage it! It will be well worth your effort!
