I was just reading some stuff in my feed reader* when I came across this from the Official Google Blog:
We’ve added a bunch of new features, which you can check out in the new version:
- You can add stuff to your blog (cute cat photos, lists, feeds) without needing to know HTML.
- You can also make a completely unique template that has just the color scheme you want, without knowing any CSS.
- Don’t want your mom to read your thoughts? Make a private blog.
- Label your posts, to group related ones together. Use one of our new templates.
Let’s see. The “add stuff to your blog” bit sounds an awful lot like the widgets in WordPress. I’ll have to give it to them, being able to make a template without knowing any CSS is pretty darn cool; WordPress guys, pay attention to that one! The private blog bit, though? Come on. That’s blatantly ripped from the WordPress.com guys. Even the options page for it seems eerily reminiscent of the Privacy page in the WordPress.com dashboard. Label your posts, huh? Categories, anyone? Yeah, I thought so. 
And lastly, Google has finally thrown out some new templates. The WordPress.com guys have been regularly adding new templates for quite a while now.
I must admit. I’ve used both Blogger and WordPress.com now, and I can’t imagine ever going back to Blogger, even if the responsiveness of the site is much better now. (When I first started blogging a few years ago on Blogger, it was terrible. Sometimes it’d take 3 or 4 tries to publish a post.) WordPress is just better than Blogger, period. And yes, I know: I’m biased. 
* Just a note: I’m not anti-Google at all. In fact, I love Google and many of their services. Gmail is my only email app, and my feed reader is coincidentally Google Reader. I just think with WordPress.com becoming such a hit, Blogger.com might be a lost cause. All of the cool kids are going to WordPress, as they should.
Comments 8
Err… did WordPress really invent the concepts of privacy and tagging things with keywords? Sounds more like Blogger finally getting around to some basic features.
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 12:58 pm ¶Amen to that. I moved over back in March, and I haven’t looked back. The new Blogger doesn’t interest me at all.
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 1:03 pm ¶Incidentally, I just read your “About” section, and notice that you are a History major… I did my degree in Modern History nearly 10 years ago – hope you are enjoying it!
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 1:04 pm ¶Slone: I don’t know the exact timeline, but I do know WordPress is one of the blogging tools that has had categories forever now. Also, I’d never heard of a Privacy option for blogs until WP.com did it.
Andy: Yep, loving the history.
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 1:11 pm ¶As someone who has two blogs – one on Blogger and one on WordPress – I can say that I am so close to moving the Blogger one over. The bugs on Blogger – particularly ever since Google “claimed” to be out of BETA for Blogger – have been terrible. And, responsiveness is getting worse, not better. I have not had similar problems with WordPress.
Mitch
Posted 12 Jan 2007 at 7:15 am ¶Mitch: That sounds a lot like how Blogger worked for me a few years ago. Buggy, unresponsive, etc.
Just move your other blog over to WordPress and be done with it.
Posted 12 Jan 2007 at 9:32 am ¶The biggest gripe about Blogger is the drag/drop layout…They seem to forget those who use classics thus making hard to have those “fun features” like labels.
Sigh…Blogger is a good beginners to blogging but a lot once they get the “newness” out seem to gravitate toward Wordpress for the “freedom”.
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 9:47 pm ¶Anonawhat?: Ah, so if you use one of the classic (non-drag-and-drop) layouts, there’s no easy way to integrate labels? Crappy.
And yeah, that’s what I’ve heard time and again: start with Blogger, get sick of it, go elsewhere (“elsewhere” often being WordPress).
Posted 14 Jan 2008 at 10:44 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
[...] Деякі пишуть, що новий блоггер багато чого перейняв у Wordpress.com. Я вважаю, що це лише ще один крок до стандартизації інтерфейсів і нічого в цьому поганого немає. [...]
Post a Comment