Tag Archives: Blogger

WordPress vs Blogger: Which One Is Better? 2021 Comparison

[ad_1] Trying to decide between WordPress vs Blogger to make a blog in 2021 or beyond? That’s the question we’re going to answer in depth in this post. But first, a spoiler alert – in 2021, WordPress is almost always a better choice to start a blog or website. But to understand why we say that and how each platform works, you should still read our full WordPress vs Blogger comparison. Keep reading for all the gory details when it comes to Blogger vs WordPress… 👋 WordPress vs Blogger: Introductions To start our comparison, let’s quickly introduce these two tools and clear up some potentially confusing details about WordPress. WordPress WordPress is open-source software that helps you create a blog or website. It’s by far the most popular way to create any type of website – the WordPress software powers over 41% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes – that number is as crazy as it sounds! Part of the reason why WordPress is so popular is that it’s incredibly flexible. It makes a great option for a blog, but you can also extend its functionality to create portfolios, eCommerce stores, online courses, directories, and lots more. WordPress can be a little tricky, though, because there are actually two “versions” of WordPress: WordPress.org/self-hosted WordPress – this is the home of the free open-source WordPress software. You can install WordPress on your own web hosting for free. However, while WordPress itself is free, your web hosting will usually cost around $5 per month. WordPress.com – this is one specific implementation of the WordPress software. WordPress.com lets you make a blog for free just by signing up for an account. However, the free version has some limitations. When most people say “WordPress”, they mean the open-source WordPress software. If they mean WordPress.com, they’ll specifically say “WordPress.com”. If you want to learn more about the differences, you can read our full WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison. But for this post, here’s all you really need to know: WordPress.com – lets you create a blog for free but doesn’t let you use AdSense or install WordPress plugins to add more features (unless you pay for the expensive plans). WordPress.org/self-hosted WordPress – requires a little money to set up, but is incredibly flexible. You can install WordPress themes and plugins and monetize your site however you want. For this comparison, we’ll focus mostly on how WordPress.org/self-hosted WordPress compares to Blogger, but we will bring up WordPress.com a few times. Blogger Blogger is a free blogging service owned by Google. It lets you easily create a blog using your existing Google account. It’s not software – it’s just a service that lets you create a blog by registering for an account. Whereas WordPress powers over 41% of all websites, Blogger powers a little under 1% of websites. So WordPress is definitely the more popular option in this comparison. The main reason Blogger isn’t more popular is because Blogger is quite limited in comparison. It’s really just for simple blogs – it doesn’t allow for any of the flexibility that WordPress offers. But if all you need is a simple blog, Blogger can definitely get the job done! 👐 WordPress vs Blogger Ease of Use In terms of ease of use, both Blogger and WordPress are quite beginner-friendly. Even if you’ve never made any type of website before, you should be able to easily set up both platforms. This applies to both self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com. WordPress To create a self-hosted WordPress website, you’ll need to do two things: Purchase WordPress hosting to power the WordPress software. Again, this costs around $5 per month for a simple site. Install the WordPress software. Installing software might sound a little complicated, but it really isn’t. Because WordPress is so popular, most web hosts offer user-friendly setup tools that let you install WordPress with just a few clicks. For example, at Bluehost (one beginner-friendly host that we’ve reviewed), installing WordPress is as simple as filling out this form: Once you install WordPress, you can manage your site from a simple dashboard like this: To create content, you can use the WordPress block editor, which makes it easy to include both text and media (like embedded videos). The block editor also gives you more flexibility, letting you easily create multi-column layouts: To control the design of your site, you can install WordPress themes. There are thousands of free themes available, many of which are free.  If you want even more control, you can use a visual, drag-and-drop page builder plugin to design every single aspect of your site. For example, the Divi theme gives you full code-free control over your site. At WordPress.com, it’s even simpler – you can just register for an account to create your site. Blogger Blogger is also super simple. To create a blog, you can use your existing Google account and follow a simple prompt to create your blog. To create content, you can use Blogger’s simple text editor, which works a lot like Google Docs. You can easily format text and insert images/videos, but you don’t get as nearly many options as WordPress. For example, there’s no easy way to create multi-column designs: To control the layout of your blog, you can use the drag-and-drop layout builder: You also get a separate theme builder that lets you control basic colors and fonts. In general, though, WordPress gives you a lot more options for controlling the design of your blog. ⚙️ WordPress vs Blogger Flexibility In terms of flexibility, there’s no contest between WordPress and Blogger – WordPress is 100X more flexible than Blogger*. Blogger is just for blogging.  WordPress is great at blogging, but you can also use it for lots of other stuff, too. In addition to your blog, you can use WordPress to create the following: Portfolio eCommerce store Online course Membership site Forum Knowledge base Directory …lots more – this is just a partial list You can also mix and

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From Blogging to WordPress Communities: A Bolivian tale – De Blogger a comunidades de WordPress: Una historia boliviana

[ad_1] Este ensayo también está disponible en español. I would have never imagined that working with WordPress would be a vital part of my current life and that I would be organizing the first WordCamp of my city Cochabamba, and the first of Bolivia. To start with my story, let me clarify that I don’t have any background in computer science or similar. I actually studied Industrial Engineering and even did a masters degree in Environmental studies. But life has taken me somewhere else and I’m very happy with my current destination. I won’t go into details of how my career changed so much, that would take hours of reading. But my early stages of WordPress started when I decided to start a small business designing and selling cushions and bed clothes. It was tiny and it only lasted a bit more than a year. It was a solo person business, little investment, and very little planning. While I sat in the small store I’d rented to sell these items, begging that people stopping at the shop’s windows would step in to buy something, I decided I needed to create a website for this business. Finding WordPress I had zero budget to hire somebody but I had good confidence in my ability to learn things on my own. I had always been the nerdy type and a close friend with computers in general. Thus, I decided I would figure out how to build a website on my own. I ended up building the most simple website/blog with WordPress.com. I didn’t even have a budget to buy a custom domain and I stayed with the free subdomain from WordPress.com. Unfortunately, soon my entrepreneurship was over. There were no profits and any income went mostly to pay the store’s rent. To add to the decision, a previous company with whom I had worked before, contacted me for a job opening that matched my profile. I needed that income. Therefore, I closed the store and forgot about my entrepreneurship. However, that brief encounter with a simple website had opened a field out there that I wanted to explore better some day. Back to the employee mode, I started my new job as a technical writer for a software development company. Since I had done my masters degree in the UK, I had a decent level of English, and somehow my close affinity with computers and technology made it easy for me to translate complex software jargon into simple tutorial steps. As I got more training in technical writing, I started to improve my writing skills in general. That reconnected me with a long lost passion of mine- writing. I’d forgotten that little girl in me that used to love writing stories and journaling. In all these years of my adult life, I hadn’t reconnected to it. That’s when I realized I had to have a blog. I needed a blog. And when WordPress.com came to my encounter again. Diving Deep This time I wanted to know the platform deeply. Creating my blog helped me become more familiar with WordPress and website building in general. I blogged about writing, my thoughts, book reviews, and everything that could come to my mind. That was in 2015. I don’t remember exactly how I got into the WordPress support forums, probably looking for answers to a specific issue about my blog. That’s when I realized there were other people’s questions that I could actually answer. I began checking the forums a couple of times per week. I did it as a hobby. I liked that I was able to help people and learn more while doing that. Some people at my work checked their Facebook to relax on their break time, I checked the WordPress.com forums. That’s how I found out about the Happiness Engineer position in Automattic. A Happiness Engineer provides customer support to people building their blogs or websites with WordPress.com. When I read the job description, it was like reading a job that was perfect for me. Even more it offered the possibility to work remotely and even travel while still working. My career as a technical writer was stuck after three years and I was also certain that I didn’t want to go back to any job related to Industrial Engineering. My story about applying to Automattic is long. To summarize it, I didn’t get in it the first time I applied. I had to do the trial twice and re-applied three times in total. I had to learn about HTML and CSS. But after almost one year and a half in between the applications and the two trials, I finally got the job. WordPress became my main means of income. Building A Community It was in this job that I learned about the WordPress communities around the world and WordCamps. And when somebody asked, how is the WordPress community where you live? I was speechless. I really didn’t know. Was there a community? Soon after finding there wasn’t any community, I started to dig more information about what was needed to organize one. I talked about the idea with some colleagues and they provided good insights. But I was still debating inside myself, who would start it? Was it me? It couldn’t be. It was true I provided technical support for blogs and websites, but I knew nothing about coding, plugin or theme development. It had to be somebody else, an expert WordPress developer,  not me. But after trying to gauge interest and ask around I realized that the only way to find these community members was to start the community. Therefore, the WordPress community in Cochabamba was born. That was 3 years ago. We’ve had ups and downs, probably similar to any other community. And although Cochabamba is not a big city, we had issues finding a location that would be accessible to everybody and wouldn’t incur a cost. We had people coming from all different levels of knowledge, from

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