What you get for free
WordPress.com is a commercial venture. It’s a way for the kind souls who have put time, money and a whole load of effort into the open source and free-to-download WordPress blogging engine to make some money back. They do this by making it stupidly simple to set up and maintain a blog, while introducing some rather hefty limitations for experienced users.
A free WordPress.com account offers:
- A blog, which you can turn into a full-on static or hybrid (part blog, part static) website.
- 3GB of free storage for posts and media.
- Publicize, a tool for connecting your blog with social networks.
- Free statistics for tracking visitors.
- Access to hundreds of non-premium themes, many of which can be customised further.
- WordPress.com access from mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry.
WordPress.com designates the following as premium upgrades:
- Custom Design ($30 per blog, per year) adds custom CSS (not PHP editing) and fonts.
- Custom Domains ($13 per domain, per blog, per year) removes the .wordpress.com part of your URL.
- Guided Transfer ($129 one-off payment) for transferring your WordPress.com site to your own web-host for greater independence and freedom.
- Ad-free ($30 per blog, per year) removes any possibility of WordPress.com showing adverts on your blog to non-logged in visitors.
- Premium themes (priced per blog for the lifetime of the blog).
- A redirect ($13 per blog, per year) for redirecting traffic from yourblog.wordpress.com to your new domain.
- Additional space (priced per amount) for storing more posts and media.
- VideoPress ($60 per blog, per year) for uploading, hosting and embedding your own videos on your WordPress.com blog
Conversely, Blogger is not a commercial service. It was acquired by Google in 2003 who have since kept it ticking over, with a few redesigns and some recently-added new templates. The rather ancient Blogger features page (ancient because it explicitly mentions uploading to Google Video and easily accessing iGoogle, two of Google’s many dead projects) promises users access to all features. There are no upgrades, no fees for adding a custom domain, and all the customization options thrown in that Blogger has available.
Included features worth noting are:
- A template designer for customizing your blog’s appearance.
- Free hosting, free Blogger (or Blogspot) sub-domain and option of using a custom domain (either registering through Blogger or using one you already have).
- The ability to add media to your posts, with no quoted maximum storage space.
- Quick access to Google’s advertising schemes.
- Pages static content on your blog.
- Mobile access via iPhone and Android apps, as well as SMS or email blogging.
It would seem that despite WordPress having the plugins and themes markets sewn up, Blogger still offers more for those looking for a free service.
The Sign-Up Process
WordPress.com allows you to register for an account with an email address, username, password and URL. Blogger is a Google service, and just like YouTube, requires a Google account. If you already have a Google account then this makes signing up a painless affair, but if you don’t (highly unlikely, unless you have something against Google), you’ll have to register for the whole package. This also means if you do have a personal Google Account but want to distance yourself from the topic you’re blogging about you’re going to have to create a new account, and also deal with Google’s messy multiple-account management.
Google’s sign-up process doesn’t indicate that you do not need to supply a mobile phone number or an email address, despite asking for one. Conversely WordPress.com only asks to fill out four fields but will also run a check for the URL you enter and try to sell you a premium domain (which costs to register, and requires an account upgrade to use on WordPress.com) as well as pointing out the flaws in the free account you’re about to register.
Managing Your Blog
Both WordPress and Blogger have centralized areas from which to manage your blog empire, which are separate to the settings for the blogs themselves. The two areas are equally attractive and usable, with both services featuring an area to read blogs you follow as well as the various outlets under your control.
On WordPress this takes the form of a deep attractive blue theme with a tabulated layout that allows you to quickly switch between reading, overseeing blogs and managing analytics in addition to a quick post button.
Blogger houses all of this on the one page, with a quick compose button found next to the blog title itself. Beneath this are new posts from the blogs you have chosen to follow on the service. It goes without saying that you can’t follow Blogger blogs on WordPress.com and vice-versa, though it would be nice if we could all get along
In Conclusion,
I'd highly recommend you to use blogger to create your blog, it gives you alot of facilities and comfort and easiness for free.