Switching Blogs?
2007 October 18
So I've been toying with the idea of switching my blog to WordPress. I really like the cleaner look of WordPress and (especially) that you can have different pages within the blog. But I'm not too keen on having to pay money for the ability to do anything interesting with my template or for decent storage. Plus in switching blogs I would loose all the links and stats here. It's a hard call.
So what do you think? Is it worth it to switch blogs? Is it just a stupid idea?
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julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
you should most definitely change. . . and wordpress can suck in all of your blogger content.
it is quite better.
I just switched my blog from blogspot to wordpress and I LOVE it.
I love wordpress.
having tried vox, xanga, typepad, blogger and wordpress (both wordpress and self hosted), I think wordpress is the way to go (typepad users would have a coronary to hear me say that hehe they're a loyal bunch)
I used hostmysite and it's less than $50 a year for a blog account. Pennies really. They set it all up for you with wordpress installed and you can easily transfer your blogger over…wordpress even has a little instant tool deal.
the benefits of course to having a self hosted blog are plugins and being able to customize your templates as well as having your own domain if you want. But wordpress hosted blogs are pretty versatile and you can open a wordpress blog, move over your blogger blog and try it and THEN get an account with a server and your own domain. So you don't have to completely commit – you can even leave your blogger blog up and running while you play with wordpress without having to do everything all over again when you get your own server.
You CAN theoretically do static pages with blogger, you just have to create a new blog for every page and then link over that way. I did that when I had a blogger blog. It was a tad annoying but it worked.
anyway, there's my vast wealth on the subject … I'm sort of embarrassed about how much I know about these things – it's because I have a community site, pub theology site, cohort site and have created several blogs as small business sites for clients…really truly that's why
I like the flexibility of self-hosted wordpress but if you don't want to pay anything to have a wordpress blog and you can't find free hosting service, then wordpress-hosted will be the way to go.
wow a lot of wordpress fans out there. I think I might play around with WordPress and see what I want to do. I just really really don't like their basic themes…
I switched to wordpress and won't go back. I say do it.
Julie, here's a page which handily has screenshots of some of the wordpress.com themes (scroll down to see them):
wordpress.com theme reviews
Some of my favorite themes are here and I don't think this is even the complete list of themes they offer.
If you go self-hosted, there are some very creative and different themes freely available. The blog at http://www.weblogtoolscollection.com lists new free themes daily (the themes are free but you have to cover the self-hosting cost as Makeesha explained).
WordPress is a treat. I actually use it for a website, rather than a blog, with the pages facility. Don't know much about the other blogs but the guys at wordpress just seem to have made everything so easy for a non-techie like me.
You can import all your blogger blog into wp and the range of themes is pretty extensive.
I started on blogger and switched to wordpress self-hosted a little over a year ago.
The themes that are available for self-hosted are almost endless … so if you're feeling limited by the wordpress themes, my guess is you're looking at .com rather than .org. Some of the themes for self-hosted are really beautiful and artsy … and go way beyond anything in blogger.
I'm definitely a huge fan of wordpress. I toyed with the other platforms, but kept coming back to wordpress before I made the leap. I still have a number of blogs in blogger and like that, but find it very limited. It's like using word processing software vs. desktop publishing software. I can still get the job done, but I can't get fancy or have fun with it.
Hi Julie!
I've set up four self-hosted wordpress blogs, including , and I love it. Plugins are such a handy feature to have. And there are tons of free theme layouts that you can easily download and install. If I recall correctly, the theme options at blogspot are pretty limited.
Chandler