Comments on: What Influenced Your Blogging Platform Choice?

By: Lorelle on WordPress » Change the Post Title - Also Change the Post Slug

Lorelle on WordPress » Change the Post Title - Also Change the Post Slug — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:00:50 +0000

[...] An article I posted recently has a bit of a problem. The article is titled What Influenced Your Blogging Platform Choice. [...]

By: badMike

badMike — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:19:17 +0000

I’m very late to the party here, but my 2 cents: I chose WordPress because a) it was free; and b) my new hosting company could install it for free. I’m tech enough that I figured I could maintain WordPress after it was installed, but I had no idea how to install it and that scared me to do it myself. However, I love using WordPress so much I can’t imagine using anything else. I run two sites with it and, sometimes with some tough tweaking and free help in the support forums, I can get both of them to do exactly what I want.

By: Phil Gerbyshak

Phil Gerbyshak — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 03:05:34 +0000

I started with Blogger, because it was easy and free. I didn’t know what to expect, like many, so I gave it a whirl. I migrated to TypePad because I could easily understand the migration over, and because TypePad is like Blogger on steroids, plus more, like trackbacks, categories, and now widgets.

I’ve looked at WordPress, and it looks good, but now as I approach the 750, and then 1000 post threshold, with quite a few trackbacks and comments, I don’t think moving to WordPress is for me, though we do use WordPress for my podcast at http://www.nobullshitleadership.com

By: Polaris

Polaris — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:36:30 +0000

I moved my blog to WordPress.com after using Blogger (2 different blogs) for about half a year. My main reasons for shifting were:
1. Categories
2. Widget support for the newer themes

This last point needs to be elaborated a bit. I wanted a “recent comments” widget in one of my group blogs which was hosted by Blogspot. This was easy to find, but somewhat tricky to integrate into my theme. Then, if I changed the theme, I knew I would have to do the whole thing again.

Simple things like blogrolls, links and sitemeters needed third party tools. WP.com allows a blogroll/links widget and has (limited) site stats. When/If Mirkwood receives more traffic, I might need a more sophisticated sitemeter, but until then, the available Site Stats and Feed Stats is good enough for me.

By: Sexy Sadie

Sexy Sadie — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:31:59 +0000

I am still using Blogger, and I am satisfied. But I do miss the option of adding categories. I like the way Blogger feel, and I love to change the look on my blog. I looked to Blogcharm who seem to have the same feel but with categories, and I made an account there, but still I have not recieved a confirming-mail from them. This is two weeks ago…

By: Collin

Collin — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:58:38 +0000

I started out with an application called pMachine in about 2003, having seen it in use at a photography blog. To put it simply, it sucked. It was hard to manage posts, the template – well, there was only one!

I had heard of WordPress but it looked scary at the time. Getting more and more fed up with pMachine I gave it a go. I haven’t looked back since.

I looked at Blogger a couple of weeks ago and I am so glad that I didn’t go there! Actually, I have always been hosted so Blogger wasn’t really an option for me.

By: Maurizio P

Maurizio P — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:39:45 +0000

Some reasons why a web geek should love WordPress:

- first of all, it’s robust, light, up-to-date, has many built in functions – but still remains EASY
- if the function you need is not built-in, there are thousands of ready-to-use plugins out there.
- you can easily write your own plug-in and/or hack your WP with just little PHP knowledge: it’s really easy to understand (“code is poetry”, they say)
- easy-as-hell permalink customization
- it’s template-based, tableless, and most templates are XHTML compliant
- extended documentation, and last but not least, THE HUGE COMMUNITY OF USERS AND DEVELOPERS!

These are only the first things that came in my mind, but I’m sure there are many others valid as well.

By: Edrei

Edrei — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:39:23 +0000

I started out using Blogger for about two years. Pushed the limits of coding it too with all the hacks that allowed me to even bring up a comment form much like that of WordPress. Even when I got my hands on a domain name and webhosting, it would have took me a full year to eventually decide that I needed a new blogging platform.

Back then it was a tossup between Movable Type and WordPress. Then MT made the mistake of shifting to a paid service and I stumbled upon the WordPress channel on freenode. The rest is as they say, history.

I think everyone needs to start with free blogging platforms instead of being spoilt with the server-side platforms first. I mean cause in the long run, as a blogger, I had an idead of what I expected from my blog and who my readers were like so when I shifted to WordPress, I wasn’t so clueless especially when it came to the plugins. I knew what I want instead of having a blog bloat.

A year later and I now help a lot of people shift their blogs to WordPress and help them find the plugins they need. Its very different to see those that have been blogging for a while know what they want and have less problems in pisking up what they want from WordPress and those that just started blogging with a domain name and WordPress and often take a long time to bring their quality up to speed.

By: Melissa Barton

Melissa Barton — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:37:58 +0000

I started out at Blogger because it was well-known (okay, technically I started out at Diaryland in high school, and later moved my personal journal to LiveJournal where it still remains. But more focused blogs started on Blogger) and some of my friends used it, but it didn’t take me long to get frustrated about some of its features, like lack of categories. A friend of mine started using WordPress on her own server, and I liked what I saw.

So categories + free (I’m not making enough money to pay for blogging right now) was really it. I wish WordPress.com allowed template customization, but I understand their philosophy and I’m willing to make the tradeoff for categories.

By: timd

timd — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:33:49 +0000

I started on blogger but didn’t last more than a couple posts before switching to Typepad. I chose Typepad because it is more intuitive.