My Transition from Blogger to WordPress … Why?

If you don’t have a technology background, it is difficult to surf the waters on your own when starting a blog. When I first started blogging years ago at www.growingandgrowing.com, I signed up using Blogger.  But I had many friends who touted WordPress.

Last year, I moved from Blogger to WordPress last year.  Why?  According to Google, there are more than 43,200,000 reasons why WordPress is better than BloggerFor me, there were a select few good reasons for changing from Blogger to WordPress, including:

  • WordPress is more robust.  When I started blogging here, it was simply a family website where I had posted a few family pictures along with some funny stories about my kids.  Then, a few years ago my father had a near fatal car accident and the blog became a conduit to communicate with family and friends throughout the country.  It also became an outlet to describe the tremendous trials that our family faced.  Over the past year, www.growingandgrowing.com has become a platform for me to share some best practices about leadership and life.  For this new platform on leadership, I simply needed a new blogging platform.
  • WordPress is more functional.  At first, I was using Google’s free hosting on Blogger.  There were a lot of constraints and limitations from Google during those first few years.  I felt that I was just using the “freebie” blogging platform.  However, on the self-hosted WordPress blog, I have found that many of the prior limitations are no longer present.  I now have access to literally thousands of “plugins” that allow me to control the functionality and usefulness of the blog.  Consequently, I have received numerous comments about the “professional” feel of my new platform.
  • WordPress allows ownership.  It never happened to me, but I have heard many stories about bloggers whose blogs have been marked as SPAM by Google bots.  It could take hours or days to get control back.  Some report that when Blogger flags your blog, there is no person to contact and no easy recourse.  Now that I own my content on a server that I can control, I am more comfortable.

I may not be blog-saavy enough to understand some of the technical differences between Blogger and WordPress … and I understand that Blogger has taken great measures to add new functionality to its platform over the past year … but I have to say that the transition just feels right!  Do you know what I mean?  Take a look around and let me know whether you agree.

I will soon be launching a new e-newsletter using Mail Chimp’s plugin.  I will be updating the commenting section using the Disqus plugin.  These are just a few options that I am excited about on a WordPress platform.

Question: Have you recently moved from Blogger to WordPress?  What tips can you share about your transition?