Scroll to the bottom for links that helped me set up my blog.
I’ve actually set up two blogs: one with Blogger (the one you are currently reading) and another with Wordpress.com (not to be confused with Wordpress.org – a distinction that I’ll discus in a moment). You can view my Wordpress.com blog here: http://brycewords.wordpress.com/Before I discuss Blogger, I’ll fill you in on why I didn’t stick with Wordpress.com, which was actually a difficult decision to make. Wordpress.com differs from Wordpress.org in that the first is a hosting site that lets us set up a blog for free under one of their “wordpress.com” domain names. Wordpress.org provides a free program to build our own blog, but requires that we host our own domain, which generally costs money. So before we make a decision on whether to use Wordpress, we need to make a distinction between Wordpress.com’s free service and Wordpress.org’s system that requires us to set up and pay for our own domain.
Why doesn’t everybody just set up a free blog through Wordpress.com (if we’re not bothered by the fact that our domain will contain the label “Wordpress” in it)? The free service that Wordpress.com come provides is actually quite limited. For example, although I preferred Wordpress’s selection of templates (or visual themes) more than Bloggers, I could not modify any of these templates in any way – unless I decided to pay a premium that would allow this. Even though these templates seemed great right out of the box, they were also quite constricting.
Aside from not being able to customize my blog, there were other options with a price – those being: space upgrades, making my blog ad-free, ability to upload video straight to the blog. I think that it is a fairly simple process to transfer a blog from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org – if I decided later on to host my own domain, but for the type of blog that I was starting, I did not see this as being too likely. I’ve also heard that Wordpress.com is quite stringent on monitoring copyright infringements as part of their terms of service.
Finally, although I enjoyed some of the layouts in working with Wordpress, it didn’t seem as quick or intuitive as working with Blogger.
Aside from being much quicker and more intuitive to work with, I appreciated the fact that I could tweak the blog templates that Blogger provided. Although the initial templates seemed a bit boring and uninteresting, it allows us to play around with colour schemes quite easily – which can have quite an impact. Also, for those that are willing/knowledgeable, we can also modify the html code of the blog as well. I managed to play around with the margins of my page doing this.Also, in terms of working with the html code of the blog, many blogging programs (such as Google analytics, Webmaster tools, etc.) require that we implement some code variation in order to use their service. Again, this isn’t possible with Wordpress.com.
Another point is that Blogger’s free blogging service allows us to monetize our blog, whereas Wordpress.com does not (we would have to host our own domain to do this).
Here is a list of sites that have helped me out immensely in the last few days of me setting up this blog.
Blogging platforms:
http://wordpress.com/
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.blogger.com/home
Wordpress vs. Blogger
http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html
Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org
http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org/
http://weblogs.about.com/od/choosingabloghost/p/WordpressOvrvw.htm
Blog Tips:
http://www.blogtips.org/5-things-to-do-after-creating-a-new-blog/#more-259
http://www.squidoo.com/customize_blogger
http://www.boydcreative.net/blogging/10-ways-to-optimize-wordpress-for-more-traffic/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/03/how-to-move-from-wordpresscom-to-wordpressorg/
Stumbleupon: (check this out if you don't know what it is)
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/26/building-your-blog-with-stumbleupon/
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