The grammar is a bit off, but I wanted the rhythm right. Anyhow, I’ve been using Blogger for a while, and I’m probably going to be switching soon due to some gripes I have that I don’t see changing.
Pros:
Easy to use
Free
Hosted solution, you don’t need your own server
Some nice features, like multiple users per blog, email entries to your blog, etc. Maybe those are considered standard nowadays, though.
Googlebot will take a look at your blog pretty quickly. No guarantee you’ll get indexed, though.
Cons:
No category system. I blog on a bunch of different topics, and I need to offer my viewers a chance to see related articles. If you’re a reader and you like a post of mine on Visual SourceSafe, why would you have to go through the past 6 months of archive pages to read my other VSS posts? Answer: you won’t — you’ll leave. If there were a nice link saying “Click here for all my VSS posts” then you’d get more value out my my blog, read it more, maybe come back more often.
No RSS feed. Yes, Blogger has Atom. Yes, supposedly some people say Atom is better. Yes, a lot of RSS consumers also read Atom feeds. So what? RSS is all over the place, and if you can’t offer up an RSS feed, you’re going to miss out some.
No trackback system. If I post about someone else’s blog post and link to it, other systems will automatically instead a trackback in that other blog, linking back to my post. Very handy, very nice. Totally missing from Blogger.
No comment spam protection. Other frameworks have CAPTCHA tests built-in or addable. Blogger allows you to limit it people with Blogger accounts, or moderate your comments. It’s easy to get a Blogger account, so that won’t stop the spam. And comment moderation is s fine if you have a small blog, but it doesn’t prevent spammers from submitting comments in the first place. So as your readership grows, you won’t have time to sift through all the comments & filter spam from legit comments. Eventually you’ll end up not allowing comments at all, like Rosie probably did. By the way, her blog isn’t half bad. Much better than I expected. But anyhow.
So, I’m looking into alternative blogging software, and of course there’s stuff you can pay for. But on the free side, if you’re running Linux, Apache, PHP, & MySql, you’re set. If you’re running a Windows box…meh, not as much.
Stay tuned as I continue my investigation — maybe one day soon you’ll see a new blog up here. Maybe I’ll do a little review of the systems I looked at. Maybe I won’t do anything at all. Only the nose knows….
Written by Ben Strackany -- April 6, 2005
Ben worked for a variety of tech startups in Chicago before moving to Portland and starting DevelopmentNow in 2005. When he's not herding cats, stirring pots, and taking names, he enjoys drinking coffee while irritating the studio audience with bad puns.
