Blogger vs Wordpress | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I've been considering switching from Blogger to Wordpress over the holidays when I have plenty of free time and traffic will likely be low anyway (in case I royally screw something up!). I'm not sure how difficult the switch will be or how much work it will involve, and I'd like to get some advice on whether it's a worthwhile thing to do.

I've been doing a lot of research on the two platforms, and I also want to make sure I'm understanding the relevant differences before I do anything.

Blogger

Pros: ridiculously easy to use, very little coding, completely free

Cons: less control over SEO, Google owns your data and can shut down your blog without notice, templates aren't as customizable

Wordpress

Pros: more control over SEO, you own your data, highly customizable templates

Cons: more coding (how much?), have to pay for hosting

I've also read that there are two forms of Wordpress, a .com and a .org. It sounds like the .com is more similar to Blogger, and the .org is where you get more control over your data. Are there differences between these that I need to be aware of?

Thanks so much everyone!

Thanks for the thorough response. I purchased my domain name from GoDaddy, so I was planning on using them for hosting as well, unless there's a good reason not to use them? Since I'm not using the Blogspot domain name, migrating should be easier, yes?

I agree with everything said.  Blogger is very limited in what you can do.

I switched just about a year ago and I wish I would have done it much sooner. 

I use GoDaddy for my registration and DNS but have also heard that they are awful for hosting.  I use a company called StableHost, they are pretty good and the thing that won me over is that your rate that you get when you sign up is the same rate you pay every year after.  Many other companies will give you a great rate the first year but then jack it up in subsequent years. 

Permalinks are a big issue between Blogger and Wordpress.  One of them (I think it's Blogger) will create variations on your title, so if you have words like A, And, & The in your post title, those won't be in your URL.  Doing a straight conversion will often 'break' some of these.  I believe there are plugins that will somehow handle this, but I couldn't figure it out, though I'm sure it was something relatively easy.

Wordpress can be a tad overwhelming at first but it's pretty good.  Just be careful with your plugins.  Don't install a ton of them, and make sure that the ones you do install are vetted, because an iffy one can contain code that will allow hackers in. 

One of the other tips you want to do after you get your WP blog set up is get rid of the 'admin' account. Create another administrative account with a different user name, use that as your default, and delete the admin account. Hackers always try to 'log in' using that account name, so that will be your number one defense against hacking.

I use hostgator and are very happy with them.  They're having a Black Friday sale on hosting and I'm sure someone in the Yakezie is an affiliate if you want to take advantage of the deal.

Good luck.  If you have any lessons learned afterward, please post them as I'm sure that will help others in the future!

Lesson #1: After you import all your posts from Blogger, check to see if drafts converted to published posts. It took me a few hours to notice that happened. I was not pleased.

I hope you find Wordpress to be a lot better than Blogger in terms of control over SEO. There's some good plugins that you can use on Wordpress. 

Give Yoast a try :)