User-FriendlinessThe main concern many people have when first starting to build a site is user-friendliness and the ability to customize the look and feel of the site, so let’s tackle that first. Both sites offer pretty easy to use platforms to publish from once you start using them and get a feel for them. There are fewer bells and whistles on the platform from Blogger, so it may at first appear to be less intimidating to the less internet savvy among us; however WordPress is still rather accessible. Both sites also allow you to publish from your e-mail and via mobile phone.
Templates and LayoutsThe biggest difference in this area between the two is on the subjects of templates, layouts and customization. On the edit layout page of Blogger, you actually have access to the code of your blog, so if you are comfortable editing code, you can make tweaks and changes to the appearance of your site this way. Both sites offer pre-made templates, or allow you to insert pre-made templates from other sites that create them, but there is a far wider selection as far as templates with Blogger and it’s much less possible to change the template with WordPress, though there are some things like headers that you can still customize there. People even take layout templates from WordPress and alter the code for your Blogger page so you can have access to what WordPress offers, albeit in a slightly different form. WordPress however makes it easier to add features in posts and on your sidebar by simply adding [tag] s to your pages, without dealing with as much coding.
CustomizationCustomizing either site is going to take time, however it would appear that while Blogger offers more as far as templates go, WordPress is easier to use. WordPress also offers far more in the form of customizable “widgets”, or add-ons for your site, things that help you keep track of how many people visit your page for example, and it allows you far more options as setting up spam filters, subscribers, and comment managing. Blogger offers its own widgets, and they are easy to insert on the edit layout page by simply selecting which ones you like, and you can arrange where they appear by simple click and drag method, but WordPress wins on functionality and variety in this case.
Social NetworkingIt is also important to mention that WordPress has the advantage over Blogger as far as having multiple pages goes because it allows you to create pages with static content that are actually a part of your site and Blogger doesn’t. On Blogger, even your profile page is a separate entity.
Blogger is owned by Google and so does allow you far more social networking capability, allowing anyone with any sort of Google account to “follow” you. This means that people can easily connect with you and find your blog by exploring people’s lists of followers, and all they have to do is click a quick link to add your site to their blog roll. Both WordPress and Blogger make it easy to be picked up on RSS feeds however and showing up in readers isn’t a problem. WordPress allows you far better tracking as far as statistics keeping, trackbacks when someone else links to your blog and the like, which can be very important when you’re trying to build a successful enterprise. Blogger offers virtually nothing in the way of these sorts of statistic keeping features.
It is also worthwhile to mention that if you are looking to move content from another blog you have to your new site, Blogger does not allow importing, whereas WordPress does from a variety of sites.
WordPress Wins- But, I use both
While it has been a brief overview, hopefully this comparison has helped to illuminate some of the important differences between and features available with both Blogger and WordPress. Which site you choose depends on what the purpose of your site is and what features you feel are important to achieve your goals. Overall, WordPress is the better platform. I use Blogger for micro satellite support sites to build inbound links to my main WordPress blogs.
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