Blog platform?

You're going to get a mix of answers. But it boggles my mind how many people here use a free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com, rather than spending a few dollars on a domain and hosting for a proper self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) site.

Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife. Is that reflective of reality? Nope. But that's the vibe being communicated, and I suspect most writers here don't even realize it.

You can get hosting for under $40/year, and a domain for less than $10. That's a $50 investment in your image and branding. If you can't put even that much value on your own writing, I don't see why an agent or publisher would either. (Nor should they have high hopes for you to be able to market yourself effectively.)

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Just my opinion.

sjohnson said:

Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife.

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sjohnson said:

If you can't put even that much value on your own writing, I don't see why an agent or publisher would either. (Nor should they have high hopes for you to be able to market yourself effectively.)

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Honestly, it doesn't matter. I see writers all the time get picked up who have free sites. It's not more professional just because you're paying for it. Not all writers have to market themselves when they get picked up. It depends on the publishing printing your work.

In my opinion, I think people should at least get a domain name. You can link just about any free hosting site to your domain name. But I don't judge people based on this. Some writers are broke and paying money for something they can get for free is not a priority right now. And really, this isn't something all writers think about or should even have to worry about in the first place. Agents aren't going to judge you for it and frankly other people shouldn't either.

That said, I personally don't think there's a big difference between the two. I know people who use both and no one ever complains, though I do know someone who uses both and likes the layout of their wordpress blog better.

It boggles my mind that people conflate where the blog is hosted with use of a domain. You can slap your own domain and any site, including wordpress.com or blogger.

sjohnson said:

You're going to get a mix of answers. But it boggles my mind how many people here use a free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com, rather than spending a few dollars on a domain and hosting for a proper self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) site.

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Some people here don't have "a few dollars" to throw at something which has no guarantee of returning any investment in time and money, and it is highly unlikely that an average blog is going to make enough of a revenue stream to justify an initial expense if things elsewhere are so tight.

sjohnson said:

Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife. Is that reflective of reality? Nope. But that's the vibe being communicated, and I suspect most writers here don't even realize it.

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It isn't. Really.

sjohnson said:

You can get hosting for under $40/year, and a domain for less than $10. That's a $50 investment in your image and branding. If you can't put even that much value on your own writing, I don't see why an agent or publisher would either. (Nor should they have high hopes for you to be able to market yourself effectively.)

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I'm actually curious as to the tilt of this phrasing. Are you saying that an author who doesn't have a blog is placing no value in their work, and that a self-hosted blog is essential?

sjohnson said:

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Just my opinion.

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There is no "right" way to blog that covers all needs. Different people have different expectations of what they want.

See all the blogs I am linking to in my sig? Take a while to go through some of them. There is an amazing amount of ways to go about blogging, and there isn't a unifying element which immediately equates with success.

I use wordpress, love it, recommend it to anyone I can. I've ponied up the $20 or whatever it is to get a domain name, but I still use the wordpress.com platform (I don't think I've started using wordpress.org, and if I have, I haven't noticed). It's easy to navigate, easy to customize, and easy to find help with. And, I think it's easier to find new blogs with.

I hate blogger with a fiery passion. I used it once upon a time, long ago, and didn't really love it, but in the last few years, *as a reader*, I have become a hater. I have more problems navigating Blogger, and commenting on Blogger is such a pain in the a$$ I don't even bother anymore. I can't count the number of comments I've gone to submit that have then disappeared due to issues with their system - and by that I mean the captcha doesn't accept what I put in (6 times in a row), or I'm not logged into my openID and when I go do that my comment evaporates and I have to write it all over again...which I've stopped doing. (Bitter? No, why do you ask?)

In the last year, I've converted two friends to wordpress, one from blogger and one from tumblr. Both love wordpress much more than their old platform. And now I'm more likely to comment on their blogs.

I use a self-hosted Wordpress.org install on my own domain because I like being in control of my data, with access to all areas and no restrictions in site. But there are risks to that: I'm responsible for security, regular back-ups, and fixing my site when I inevitably mess up and break it. I'm happy doing that.

Some bloggers just want to blog, without worrying about keeping the site secure, or updated, or coding skins and all that technical stuff. For them, hosted solutions like blogspot and wordpress are great.

A professional URL adds some polish to a hosted blog, and for the price I think it's worth it... but there are plenty of pros out there who happily use wordpress.com or blogspot domains and it doesn't affect their professional appearance in any way at all.

Here's the thing about having your own space on the web: It's your space. You do what you want with it, jazz it up whatever way you like, post as often or rarely as you want, and you only put money into if if you're comfortable doing that.

There are no rules, so there's no point trying to judge bloggers in line with your own circumstances and tastes.

I use blogger with my own domain name stuck on it ($10 a year or something).

I'd used it before and knew what I was doing. It's pretty straightforward and gives you however much leeway you want to mess with the layout.

I've never used wordpress, but I have run my own website before, and it was a pain in the ass.

Blogger works, so I suppose I would recommend it if anyone was asking.

There quite a few real, established authors who use a free service like Livejournal, Blogger, or WordPress to host their blog. There are also some who don’t. Whether or not they use one over the other makes no difference on how professional or not they may seem. This isn’t like several years ago where having a free site was considered tacky.

For example: Derek Landy, George RR Martin.

Anyway, Blogger and WP each have their own little quirks. I personally prefer WP. I prefer the way it’s set up, and I’ve used it for several years now l. At this point, I’m just too familiar with it to use anything else. I moved from Greymatter installations on my sites to MovableType for a (very) short while, then went to WordPress installs which I’ve been using ever since.

WordPress is handy since you can host it yourself if you ever want to do that. It’s what I do for my personal blog. My public one is on WP.com because I’m too lazy to expend the additional effort of taking care of something I don’t use a lot. The former option gives you way more control, but the latter one is easy to start off with if you don’t want to administer your own site.

Blogger is just as straightforward as WP when it comes to blogging. You can’t install it on your own site though, afaik.

There are also other CMS’s that you can use to run a blog, but I have no experience with them.

*brand new blogger, subscribing to this thread for information, thanks all for sharing your experiences!*

WordPress is one of the most efficient and user friendly blogging platforms. It provides with a wide range of plugins that helps in creating an impressive blog and there are plugins for the search engine optimization of the blog as well. WordPress is a complete package for blogging.

Wordpress or Blogger. Blogger is easier to put advertising on IMHO.

sjohnson said:

You're going to get a mix of answers. But it boggles my mind how many people here use a free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com, rather than spending a few dollars on a domain and hosting for a proper self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) site.

Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife. Is that reflective of reality? Nope. But that's the vibe being communicated, and I suspect most writers here don't even realize it.

You can get hosting for under $40/year, and a domain for less than $10. That's a $50 investment in your image and branding. If you can't put even that much value on your own writing, I don't see why an agent or publisher would either. (Nor should they have high hopes for you to be able to market yourself effectively.)

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Just my opinion.

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Wow, seems a bit harsh, but that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I would just like to say that not everyone has that kind of money to spend. It may not seem like much to you, or others, but some of us have such a tight budget that an expense like this is not possible. The money I would have to spend on that would mean no food in our apartment for a week, or gas in our car so my husband can go to work. Besides, I've seen publishers take on someone that didn't pay for a domain for their site.

To OP, I have a blog on both WordPress and Blogger. I like some aspects of Blogger better, but I prefer my WordPress blog, seems to get more traffic than on the Blogger site. I would do some research on both and see which one fits you better.

sjohnson said:

...it boggles my mind how many people here use a free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com, rather than spending a few dollars on a domain and hosting for a proper self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) site. Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife... that's the vibe being communicated, and I suspect most writers here don't even realize it.

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That hobbyist or clueless vibe from a free site? I would guess that's individual to you. The only thing that says professional or not to me is the writing.

For what it's worth, I follow an author who uses tumblr for his free site (Ernest Cline) who is a produced screenwriter, published author and whose novel has been optioned by WB. I also follow Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, and Neil Gaiman on Tumblr. I don't think any of them actually use it as their primary site, but they use it.

I own my domain name but haven't invested in WordPress.org I was having trouble with it, but no trouble with Wordpress.com and have my wordpress linked to my domain name.

sjohnson said:

Whenever I see username.freeservice.etc, I never assume that person is a professional. I assume they're a hobbyist or a clueless aging housewife.

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I assume you're working on the next How to Win Friends and Influence People.

You can make those assumptions about me and my blog, and you'd be correct. I am in fact, clueless about running a site, as well as an aging housewife.

I'm also not a professional, since, yanno, no one pays me.

Neither of those have anything to do with my abilities as a writer, or my goals as a blogger.

BTW, one of my blog's themes is about being broke/living broke, so no, while I would like to leave the "wordpress" out of my site address, that $40 or $50 is not at the top of my priority list.

To the OP: I've been very happy with Wordpress, in every way. Many options, supportive community, and tech support.

sml said:

I did a quick search and I did not find this topic discussed anywhere. I wanted to hear some opinions on which platform everyone thinks is better to use and why - Blogger or Wordpress. If there is something else out there that is even better than those then please let me know that as well.

I haven't been overly happy with my writing style (or amount of time I have to post, but that is here nor there), and am considering breaking away from what I have been doing and beginning fresh. If you're interested in critiquing my posts/style please feel free to do so as well, though no pressure.

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I've used both and Wordpress on my own site, and they're all more that fit for purpose. I currently use Blogger redirected to my own domain for several reasons:

1. Single sign-on. Once I'm signed on to Google I can access Blogger, Google Analytics and PicasaWeb without signing on again.
2. Blogger allows free redirects to your own domain name, Wordpress.com charges an annual fee for this.
3. Good mobile viewing experience. Some blogs look abysmal on a smartphone. With one of the standard Blogger templates, it will look great.
4. No hassle. Running your own site is a PITA, no matter how good the platform is. After all, I just want to write my blog, any time taken up with admin is wasted.

I guess that last point is the strongest. If all you want to do is write your content, then choosing one of the managed platforms, Blogger or Wordpress.com makes most sense to me.

I've been thinking of starting a blog. I don't intend to post a ton, but it's something that'd be nice to have I think.

I'm leaning heavily towards Wordpress (free version) right now, and would consider upgrading to the .org version & a custom domain if I got into it later. It just seems to be the most customizable and have the best customer support, and I want the option of expanding. I've also seen some people manage nice looking websites with it (of which the blog is only a part -- that appeals to me. If I ever upgraded I wouldn't want the blog to be the main page anymore and would prefer to have more of an actual website than anything).

Blogger/Blogspot has been covered heavily here and is currently my second choice. The fact that it interfaces so heavily with google is actually a negative for me though -- I have four different e-mail addresses though google (professional, work-specific, writing-specific, and personal). It's a PITA trying to keep those organized properly when Google insists on asking you which account you're on, which is your main one, this/that/the-other.

Weebly is a free option as well. It's more of a website builder than a blog, but it does have a blog option that apparently isn't awful. Or so my friend says.

Livejournal is another one. Jim Butcher, one of my favorite authors, has a blog there but doesn't post much. LJ seems to have mostly gone out of style.

I don't know exactly what Tumblr is. I don't think it's quite a blog, but it's apparently close. One of my friends claims to blog there, but it confuses me.

& last but not least on my little list is... blog.com -- I actually know next to nothing about it, except that everyone mentions it to me when I ask about blogs. It looks alright on the surface but I don't know anyone who uses it.

There's also Joomla for website building, but it doesn't have a blog focus.

I have a free WordPress account, and I really like it. It's easy to use, and easy to customize so that it doesn't look the same as everyone else's. Not that my design is brilliant, but it's pretty, and I like pretty. Link is in my sig if you want to take a look.

To me, the bottom line is that you should do whatever you want. Have money to fling around? Then pay for the domain. However, paying for a more professional looking site isn’t going to net you an agent or get your book published. Only a good book is going to do that. I can’t see an agent, that is interested in my book, being turned off by my free blog hosting site. “That book is so brilliant! I can’t believe she’s never had a novel published before! I must send the contract this very second! Hold on a minute. Free website? What an unprofessional. Now, where’s that form rejection letter--”

Now, if your blog is full of typos and bad English, maybe. Wordpress.com, not so much.

There’s also been some debate online recently about whether the online platform is even achievable nowadays. Now that everyone, their mother, and their dog have a blog, getting the 1000 hits a day that I’ve heard some agents/publishers are looking for isn’t as doable as it once was. Too many blogs with the same amount of audience makes for poor numbers unless one is well-known already. One article I read mentioned that some already established authors were having trouble keeping their number of hits up. I think, like the dotcom bust, the days of building an online platform with any chance of success may be behind us.