What is a better format for bloggers?

[Felicia Chien]

Hey all, lately I've been seeing a lot of bloggers move their blogs from Blogger to Wordpress. I tried wordpress once, just to see what it's all about, but I didn't really like it. Can anyone give me their insight if I should leave my blog at Blogger, or should I change to Wordpress or LiveJournal, or any other website that might be more suitable for book bloggers and follower friendly? 

Thanks.

Livin' Life Through Books

[Jordan Butcher]

I've had both, but for different purposes. I love blogger though, it's so simple to navigate. Most of what I hear where the switch from Blogger to Wordpress happens is as your blog gets much bigger, Wordpress may be able to cater to your needs more. But like I said, blogger is fantastic for the fact it's so easy to use.

Jordan Butcher
The Ink Puddle

[Tricia Linden]

I'm on Wordpress and I like it. I've tried blogger but it seemed to.... boring well not exciting. But that's just me. Based on the answers I see here, Blogger is very popular. So go with what's best for YOU, not someone else. Enjoy always, or what's the use?  T

[Majanka Verstraete]

Wordpress.com blogs are unfortunately very limited in their capabilities. However, I've always had the feeling that whereas WordPress is a community that works on their platform every day, the coding is neat and professional and the system itself very secure, Blogger on the other hand seems to have coding thrown all around the place, with the approach of: if it works, then it's good, even though the coding might be messy and sometimes even too complicated. But in the end, it's a personal choice. Some people prefer the clean, professional look of WordPress and others like the cozy feel of Blogger. I personally grow agitated every time I try to work with Blogger, so I stay away from it as far as possible.

Personally, I would advise everyone to get their own webhosting (comes as cheap as 20 dollars a year) and install the self-hosted version of WordPress on it. Now that is freedom in the purest sense of the word. There is nothing you can't imagine you would want your website to do that WordPress can't. Image galleries, portfolios, forums, nothing is too much for WordPress. There are probably more than a million widgets you can put in the sidebar and ask to do your bidding. There are themes that transform your blog into a shop, complete with cash register, download functions and whatever you could wish for. Every time I come up with the craziest idea, WordPress is there to support my idea by saying - hey look, I have plugins for that! It's amazing really.

[Nicci Tribbett]

I've used the self-hosted wordpress for years.  I like owning the content on my sites.    I admit though I love some of themes Blogger offers.  I have not used Blogger but am very familiar with the process of sitting up a blog with the materials they offer you.  

Self-hosted Wordpress does requires a bit of comfort with backend coding or just following instructions for setting up the multitude of plug-ins and themes.  

There are a plethora of theme developers out there constantly creating new themes everyday.  A majority of those themes are free for use.  Some are professional looking, and others more cozy.  Unless you can modify a theme to your specification, searching for the right theme may take some time.  I'm not trying to discourage you but self hosting is not like bloggers, where most of the setup is already available.  Buying website space is cheap these days.

If you're comfortable where you are and you aren't ready to learn the backend of a self-hosted site, I say stay where are. 

[Courtney]

I'm actually in the process of moving my blog from Wordpress to Blogger. I've been at Wordpress since 2008. What I don't like about WP is it doesn't except javascript, so you can't put cute little widgets in your sidebar, including follower boxes, and goodreads and amazon widgets. I think it makes a site look barren if visitors can't see how many followers you have. If you have a website that offer self-hosting wordpress.org, you will have a lot more functionality. At Blogger you have much more design flexibility and it seems a lot more user friendly to me.

Gotta Have YA

[Felicia Chien]

Everyone has so many helpful pros and cons for using both Word Press and Blogger. Thanks so much for bringing them to my attention. Am still on the brink of decision, but more likely, I will probably stick to Blogger. The reason I  was asking was because another blogger user brought it to our attention that Blogger can delete your blog at any time for what ever reason, which got me a little scared about staying there. But everything seems to be in working order so far...

[SmatteringsBooks]

Oh OK Wordpress comes with my site so that's why it works pretty good.

[Bookish Hobbit]

The email subscribe widget does display how many followers you have for email and Wordpress users.

[J S]

Wordpress is my preferred route.  There are a lot of very good free templates to choose from (either on Wordpress.org itself or outside).  There are many plugins too for any feature you might want to add.

The other option .. I've recently set up a wordpress 'network' install (on an ubuntu linux server) so it's very easy to add more weblogs (like for friends or the six or ten you might run yourself).  It's a bit more technical to do this, but there are recipes out there that can be found easily.  And a good wordpress forum if you get stuck.  I got tired of webhost company shenanigans so went the self hosting route.  This may not be for you, but wordpress makes it easy.  Now my blogging cost is $8/year for each URL pointed to the server and that's it.

I also use scribefire to put posts up, which makes managing a blog that much easier.  Not sure if scribefire works with blogger (but it probably does).  Good luck!

[DM Yates]

Blogger helps you find blogs to follow too.  Just hit next in your top bar, and it will take you to the next blog similar to your interests.  You can keep going that way and search.  Or you can do a search for similar ones.

[Grace]

On Wordpress you can browse by tag, so I think they're both similar in that function.

[SmatteringsBooks]

Never heard of Blogger. Am up with Word Press. So far I gather you can run both simultaneously.