Blogger vs. Wordpress

When I told Pat that I wanted to start a blog, we discussed what it would be about and why we would be writing it.  We both agreed that we liked the idea of a journal for friends and family to read, that was separate and different from Facebook, and that would be treated as a hobby and not a job.  Many people who are starting blogs these days want to use them as a business - to sell something or to make money - and since we have neither the time, nor a product to sell, it made sense to keep things simple and fun. 


Pat explained to me what we would need:

1. Registration
2. DNS Hosting
3. Content Hosting

Pat explained that the registration is like your phone number, DNS hosting is like your yellow pages listing, and Content hosting is like your house where you connect your phone number.  Several companies offer all three, for free - the top two are www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.  We went with Blogger and started posting away.


A few weeks later, I found a template that I liked.  I tried and tried to make our blog look similar, but I wanted that exact template and it was only available on Wordpress.  I was also unhappy with the comments section on Blogger, and I noticed that all of the blogs I follow are designed on Wordpress.  I impulsively made the decision to switch from Blogger to Wordpress, and found that lots of people do the same.  Unfortunately, I didn't spend the time reading about why people make the switch.


Fast forward through six hours of my life that I will never get back, and I realized that Wordpress.com is a basic content host with little - to no - customization and the template, Amazon widgets, Google apps, and other gadgets that I liked were only available on Wordpress.ORG.  Turns out, wordpress.com is meant to build, so that as your traffic increases you can move to a custom domain, with a private DNS server and just use Wordpress as your content host.  It was exactly what we weren't looking for - with all of three posts - and with no real direction to our writing yet, it was going to cost us monthly fees just so that I could enjoy a custom header and reply to visitor comments.


If I've lost you - or just made you bored as hell - don't worry!  I fully intend to lose and never speak of this knowledge again.  Long story post short, I spent my Saturday - through four feedings, two naps, five emails to Wordpress, and a great batch of meatballs for dinner - figuring out how to get back to Blogger.  I now know that my husband is the only source I need for writing customized CSS/HTML formatting code, and I will hopefully never google "Wordpress" again.


We plan to purchase our domain www.drinkingataltitude.com from Blogger as soon as it is released from Wordpress and own the rights to the cirlce of confusion that I have created on the web in the last few days.  We've changed our comments section, so please feel free to leave a message - we'd love to know who's reading and what you like and dislike about what we have so far.  Our future posts will always include photos - and I'm figuring out how to make them bigger and clearer - but we appreciate you sticking with us though the learning process!


Emily