I'm wanting to start a second blog with a topic of cruise travel and I can't decide which blogging platform to use. Do I stay with Blogger, or go with Wordpress, or something else? What should I look for? If you utilize a platform other than Blogger, I would be interested in knowing if you are happy with that platform and what makes you happy or unhappy.
This really is a solicitation for your comments, advice, recommendations.
I'm ready, willing, able to read if you point me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Wanting to Start a Second Blog
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28 COMMENTS:
I tried Wordpress, briefly, and came back to Blogger. So much more user-friendly, in my opinion.
You are so ambitious! I will look forward to seeing your travel blog; I love travel pictures....
I use both Blogger and Blogdrive and out of the two Blogger is the easiest and most reliable. Blogdrive's servers often go down so sometimes the posts I make aren't viewable for a few days.
I'm still trying to learn blogger and have been thinking about learning Wordpress.
This is one nice blogger design you have here by the way.
Everyone tells me Wordpress Wordpress, so I'm looking forward to the answers here too.
So you guys....why Wordpress...what exactly is the difference?
i love wordpress, i would say go with that, buy your own domain, get your own hosting and upload the package there. it's wonderful. to me.
It's all up to what you really want, Wordpress have many plug-ins which helps you with your blogging that blogspot have not offered but on the other side Blogspot is user friendly and you can do almost everything. i suggest to make a few research of what Wordpress and Blogspot can do and can't do for you in terms of plugins (There are stuff that we want in our blog) then from there you weigh of which one that suites your blogging needs, i think it's a great start.
Goodluck! can't wait for you to start that i love travel.
Offtopic: If you want to use inline comment instead of pop-up from blogger you can do so...go to blogger in draft then setting - comment from there click Embedded below post out from the three option then you have new comment system. please read http://www.thebuzznutter.com/2008/07/still-using-bloggers-pop-up-comment.html...Good luck.
I'm not sure how far has Blogger up to at the moment. But I used to blog with Blogger (September-October 2007) and moved to WordPress, self-hosted.
Love WordPress, because of its variety of themes and the third party plug-ins! WordPress is so much more customizable (themes + plug-ins)
As for user-friendly, I'm not having any problem with it so far.
I'll try to make a post to compare them both, but I have to blog with Blogger first for some time so I can make a fair comparison :)
But yeah, I will never ever go back to Blogger :)
I was with Blogger for two or three years and am now on my own with hostgator, using a Wordpress install with it. WP offers tremendous template flexibility and variety, but in some ways is less user friendly than Blogger. If I decide to change again, it will be back to Blogger.
I was actually reading about Wordpress yesterday and do have the freebie account.
Someone told me to get wordpress 2.5, anyways was looking at it...have to download it???...hmm yeah looks complicated.
I'm learning html on my own....it still driving me nuts!!!
What's easier HTML or CSS??
Wordpress.. Since I came here from B2Evol. I don't or will not go back, lol.. Just so many things plugins and I can make it suit my needs. Not that hard to set up on your own domain and hosting.
I will help out if I can, let me know!
I have blogs on all most all platforms. Except for typepad and you have to pay alot for that one. I tried the freebie one for awhile and it was to complicated for me. I always seem to come back to blogger. Blogger is so much easier and friendly... But, it is up to you on how much of a learning curve you wish to be on. I would rather you put all your effort into telling us wonderful things about cruising than you having to get frustrated over learning a new venue. But, that is just my 2 cents.
I'd say try out wordpress since you already know how blogger operates. I have a blog with blogger, but since I've been using wordpress longer prefer it over blogger.
I like blogger more each time I use it! They are actively adding in new features, and working hard at it. Anyways, I'm particuarly fond of it :-)
I just started another blog and went with WordPress on my own domain. I'm still tweaking the template. (And now we have the shameless plug for http://C4Him.com)
The plugins are great. You can use Comment Luv, which searches for your commenters' last post and links it - a nice feature.
There is also a "Zemanta" plugin that searches for relevant images, links and tags while you're blogging. This saves a LOT of time if you like to add images to your post!
Just make sure you backup your wordpress blog frequently in case your host has an outage.
Good luck!
I use both Blogger and Wordpress, but my Blogger blogs are currently the only ones my readers see...I am planning to unveil a beautiful WordPress MU (multi-user) community in early August. However, I didn't find self-hosted WordPress as user-friendly as everyone says it is, and I wanted to do so much with my new WordPress sites that I have hired a professional to design my site. I couldn't quickly figure out how to change the header pictures from the defaults in my WordPress theme or install the EntreCard widget, so in the middle of reading WordPress for Dummies I just gave up and hired the author! (If you do decide on WordPress, I highly recommend that you buy the book)
While I'm not all that comfortable trusting Google with my content, I find Blogger soooooooo easy to use.
Last, but possibly not least, I've lost track of whether you're heavily into paid posting, but the paid post advertisers so much prefer self-hosted blogs (Wordpress or other) to Blogger, so there are many more opportunities that I have not yet taken advantage of on my new Wordpress blogs.
Hope that helps...looking forward to seeing your new blog.
Roxy
I have only used Blogger so I don't have any comparison to make, but it seems fine to me. I didn't realize you used Blogger because I don't see the "blogspot" suffix on your URL. I assumed you had a private URL because your site looks so professional and so unique.
I'm personally really happy with Blogger. I started out at Wordpress (for all of about 4 hours!), and then switched over to Blogger because of the restrictions against advertisements at Wordpress. I'm considering going self hosted eventually, but need to look into that further (supported platforms) now with this Entrecard partnership with Sezwho, which I am pretty excited about btw!
It is funny if I will advise you to use wordpress while my own blog (www.azblogging.com) is on blogger. I had very hard times paying for hosting (from Africa), that is why i moved to blogger. Very soon, i will be back to wordpress.
This is my point of view...
The most popular blogging platforms are blogger.com (remote hosted blogger), wordpress.com (remote hosted wordpress) and wordpress.org (self hosted wordpress).
Blogger.com and wordpress.com are both remote hosted blogging platforms, but blogger.com is far more advanced than wordpress.com in terms of control over blog functionality and template. The advantage of both is that they are cheap (considering that you don’t pay for hosting, and secondly you might want to use a subdomain, so you won’t pay for a domain also) and easy to use (user friendly), so newbies and less techy individuals can easily cope with them. Also, the free hosting they provide can be more reliable than the paid hosting provided by most hosting companies. I will strongly advice someone to go for blogger.com than wordpress.com.
But here comes the ultimate master, wordpress.org (self hosted version of wordpress). The self hosted version of wordpress is almost limitless as far as functionality is concerned. Most of the professional bloggers use this version. If you want to take blogging to the next level, then the self hosted version of wordpress is the ultimate choice.
However, I only recommend it if you have some knowledge on cpanel and basic html, or have someone (like me) to always be there to help you with the tech stuffs. If not, remain on blogger.
I tried using Wordpress for my 2nd blog for a while but after having been on blogger and knowing the blogger platform and all the widgets available to me (Wordpress doesn't allow javascript), I moved my 2nd blog (and what a HUGE pain that was!) back to blogger.
Those that like Wordpress seem to love it but I guess I'm just a blogger kinda girl.
I can't wait to see what you decide...and what you write about there, too. I am soooo wanting to go on a cruise...can you say "Cayman Islands?" LOL
Original Grits, I love to cruise too and have found that it's the best bang for my trip dollar. We have been trying to cruise at least 2x a year but the cruise lengths are getting longer the older we get. I can't imagine cruising for less than 10 nights and preferably at least 14 with 6-8 of those days at sea.
I plan on exploring the different cruise lines, different cabin categories and locations on the ship, the amenities of different cabin categories and different ships. There are some lines better suited for families and others for couples, and others for party people, and others for sedate cruisers.
I can't begin to tell you how many topics there are to cover and then I also want to post different internet specials from travel agencies all over the country (there are some outstanding cruise deals right now).
We're headed on a 15 night Panama Canal this fall and I can hardly wait!!
I tried WP at first but found out right away that its way too complicated for me to understand. Blogger like most everyone says is more user-friendly.
In any case, they way to put it is go for your strength. If you feel you are comfortable with blogger then I don't see a need on why you should change platforms. Build your strengths on blogger and work up from there. :)
Mastering something is really nifty and handy at times.
I'm glad you've asked the question because I've been curious about the differences between platforms. I've only used Typepad (due to a business alliance I was in where we developed blogs for small businesses). Having said that, I enjoy the flexibility of the platform and the great support. Of course, all that comes with a monthly fee ... but that fee is less that a monthly hosting fee for a typical website. And, if I was of a mind to, a could host several blogs on my account at no additional charge. Which, in fact, I do as I'm getting friends and family involved in blogging as well.
Dang, I was going to add my two cents worth and then decided that those above me all knew better than I did so I just popped in to say "hi"!bx
I had a brief encounter with Wordpress, but went straight back to Blogger for it's ease of use. You can get plenty of free templates if you look around on the web.
I suppose you will get varying opinions, but I hope it helps you to decide ;O)
I have a blog on PNN (Personal News Network). I wrote a post about it on my blog: http://zemeks.blogspot.com/2008/07/personal-news-network-easy-to-use-fun.html if you care to read it. The best features I like is that it's simple to use, you can set up 11 different pages with a nice navigation bar on each, it's very easy to change the order of the posts. You can look at mine for a sample: http://karen.pnn.com and to get started, just go to http://pnn.com. (The only drawback I see is that it doesn't support EntreCard.)
Thank You Everyone for your advice.
For the time being I'm going to stick with Blogger, I'm fairly comfortable with how it all works and I can always change at a later time. I may go with a custom domain like I have here. I need to stick with giving time to my content instead of worry about learning a new platform.
Right now I'm trying to understand the realm of SezWho that teamed up with Entrecard.......don't actually "get it" but hopefully the benefits will become more apparent with time.
I have a couple of different blogs that are self hosted with WP. I have been toying with starting a Blogger blog, but just haven't decided the topic yet.
A few months ago, I started a cruise blog for a group cruise that I had booked. http://simplymybusiness.com/thecruiseblog/
I haven't done anything with it in several weeks, and I noticed that one of the videos is no longer working. Have to get that fixed.:) A friend and I have been working on another cruise hints blog, but it is having severe tech difficulties...caused by a certain someone not understanding CSS. haha! I am anxious for the launch of your new venture and am curious as to when you next cruise is booked. I was just visiting with DD1, in Texas, about jumping on a cruise for my 50th next month. We looked at all sorts of options and for the bucks ...a cruise was by far the best deal.
Anajz - our next cruise is a 15 night Panama Canal Transit from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale on Holland America. The cruise is expensive but I got a great deal for a full suite doing a guarantee. We enjoy HAL mostly because it isn't a party hardy line and the longer cruises are predominately senior cruisers as they are about the only ones that have 2+ weeks to be gone. My husband and I are cabin rats and love to have room in our cabin and verandah to spread out and enjoy our time at sea. The food is good, we've always experienced great service with HAL, and their suites come with many amenities including priority embarkation/debarkation, laundry and dry cleaning for the duration of the cruise (which helps a great deal with the limitations being imposed by the airlines), a Concierge Lounge that has goodies from 7am - 9pm daily, priority seating for dining, etc. Not to mention the larger cabin and bathroom facilities, and a large lovely verandah.
I'm glad to hear there are others that love to cruise.........watch for me in the next week CruiseCrazyDeb I'm looking forward to developing this blog.
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