Obviously I run with Blogger, but I’ve been curious about WordPress and occasionally irritated with Google (as when they shut down George Reisman’s blog as “spam” for a time). Today I had the opportunity to try WordPress, so I figured I’d share a few comments about the experience.
One of my friends, Bob Glass, knows even less about techie internet stuff than I do, so he came to me for help. I went through several options, and he decided to register a domain with WordPress and set up a blog through that service. The cost is $15 per year, not a bad deal. We found (what I think is) a great domain: BobGlassRadio.com.
We set up a very simple site with a couple of blog posts. Eventually, Bob plans to upgrade the page, add permanent pages for a bio and links to archives, and so on. But at least we got up and running today.
Though I found the new setting a bit awkward, on the whole WordPress is easy to use. I was surprised that one must first establishe a “.wordpress” blog before registering a domain. But once you do that it’s very easy to get the domain (with a PayPal transfer).
In creating blog entries, I was surprised that WordPress had trouble with my hand-coded “A HREF” commands. If there’s an option that allows this, I didn’t find it. But WordPress has a link button that’s pretty easy to use. I guess it’s largely what you get used to.
Like anything, tweaking a page will require a certain amount of playing around and trial-and-error. But I got the sense that WordPress can create a web page as robust as the user wants and has time to generate.
The main point is Blogger’s favor is that it will transfer content to a third-party hoster at no charge. From what I gather, WordPress charges $10 per year for that. That’s not a lot, but it contributes to my resistance to changing. I am glad, though, that there’s a good alternative to Blogger out there. Let’s hope Blogger doesn’t persuade me to use it.
For most new bloggers, though, I’d recommend WordPress over Blogger, especially if you want to host your domain through WordPress as well.
It’s entirely possible to self-host a WordPress blog without having to worry about the domain transfer charges. As an example, Voices For Reason and ARCTV aare both WordPress blogs hosted independently of the central WordPress site.