- Templates. Even the custom ones look like something from 2002, and can instantly be identified as Blogger. While I’ll accept you can spot most WordPress blogs, they look a darn sight better.
- Comments. Lets wait half an hour while the comment box opens. OK, lets start typing my witty and insightful comment, oh wait the comment box hadn’t finished loading so everything I typed has disappeared. What fun!
- Images. What size would you like your image? What are pixels? you can have them small, medium or large and like it.
- Speed. Or the lack of it.
- Lack of ownership. The inability to upload anything like a sitemap to your webspace.
- Word Verification. Have I mentioned that I can’t stand it? More to the point, half the time I can’t decipher it. Surely Blogger can create something better?
- Comments Again. There isn’t a list of recent comments to review, you have to go through each post to find new ones.
- Categories. Again, the lack of. Labels are useful, but not as good as being able to organise by category.
- No backup. Make sure you subscribe to your own feed, as I’ve mentioned before, because there’s no other way to safeguard your work.
I’m not going to do a top 10 for obvious reasons 
I write as someone who both reads a lot of Blogger blogs, and has also run a blogger blog as an experiment, and didn’t really enjoy it. I know it’s free, but really hosting and a domain name only costs about $80 a year, and you can make that back in a day or two with paid posting, so why stick with it?
Feel free to tell me where I’m wrong in the comments, and if you manage to make it to 9 (or more!) points between you, I’ll post them in a follow-up post, suitably linked up of course!
26 users commented in " Reasons Why I Don’t Like Blogger "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackGah .. I just hate blogger comments! .. Keep getting the captcha wrong .. and have you ever tried tabbing around?
Yeah, you end everywhere except where you want.
Down with Blogger! (Sorry):-)
I don’t like Blogger for all the reasons you mentioned, but I especially don’t like it when bloggers only allow comments after you sign into Blogger. This is a default setting and I don’t think most of them know it is on.
As usual, Bog-Op has proven very valuable. I have “Recent Comments” available for my side bar on Typepad, but haven’t activated it because I didn’t realize anyone used it. Thanks for letting me know otherwise.
I agree with you . When i started blogging , i used blogger for about a month but within a week shifted to wordpress .
Well, I stumbled into Blogger and inertia is keeping me here.
For those like me, a suggestion: IF YOU’VE WORKED ON YOUR PAGE AT ALL DO NOT UPDATE TO THE NEW “LAYOUT” PAGE. Everything is gone — and you have to reenter everything cookie-cutter style. The trade-off is that you can list your tags so those inclined can zoom in on those fusion-related posts and skip the global warming stuff… oh, and your sidebar shows you did 27 posts last month and 135 in 2006.
Tain’t worth it.
My HTML skills are rudimentary — but hard-won nonetheless. I want to continue learning how to modify my page — not rely on fill in the blank boxes forever.
I use Blogger myself but I agree with most of your points
Ya, the built in categories looks bad… I use a custom made label cloud 
1) Yep, WP templates look better.
2) Yep, comments are slow and buggy
3) Hmm, I think the images can be resize
4) Yep, slow…
5) Yep … and I use my RSS feed as my sitemap.
6) Yep, have to ask all bloggers to turn it “off”! (mine is!)
7) I use comments feed as my “Recent comments” widget
9) Thanks, I am going to subscribe my feeds now (for backup)
You’ve captured everything correct.. These are few reasons that made me to migrate to WordPress recently..
Several of the issues you mention are easily solved by hosting your Blogger-based blog on your own site. And of course, there are a number of additional perks to do so.
I think it’s a bit like anything else – you get out of Blogger what you put in. By that I mean that a Blogger-based blog doesn’t have to look like, well, a Blogger-based blog. I think (hope!) that I’ve accomplished that to a certain degreee with 2Dolphins
I’m opposed to the whole CAPTCHA comment verification scheme so I opted not to enable that. And I allow anonymous comments on my site as well.
Having only ever used the Blogger blogging platform, I can’t speak of the difference between WordPress categories and Blogger labels, but I find the labels to be a helpful navigation aid.
Thanks guys.
You’re right Rob, although I don’t think may people go down your route-perhaps more should? I just think there’s elements of Blogspot that an organisation like Google ought to be able to fix quickly, which would improve things for their users.
The main reason why people still have faith with Blogger is because of Google
I must agree with some of those.
The way comments are handled is terrible.
http://goldcoaster.wordpress.com
Think you’re right Andy.
Goldcoaster, most of the blogs I visit seem to use it, and I must spend my life waiting for the comments box to load….
Come on! Bloggers do have its advantages
It’s so easy to get started blogging, expecially for first time bloggers.
But the template thing might be the most obvious disadvantage.
I will Exercise for Comments!
Sunflower
Do you prefer WordPress now Sunflower?
You’re right on áll reasons.
Just add 1 more reason:
10. The annoying captcha when you’re trying to publish a post! It wont let you post unless you entered the blurry thing.
I’m still with Blogger but I decided to move to WordPress and host myself (I chose AN Hosting).
The problem is though that there is sooo much info about WordPress that it gets overwhelming.
Especially design-stuff and that (themes) You don’t know where to start.
Hey BO18,
I’m with ANHosting too.
You don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place
I’ve posted lots on WordPress, if you get stuck on anything, give me a shout.
Most of your reasoning deals with Blogger being hosted by Blogspot in general. And for the most part you are correct, but some chose to FTP that blog to their own server … I am one of them.
There are ways around the deficiencies that Blogger provides versus the power of WordPress. One only needs to apply themselves to understand them.
Before I get into comparing apples with oranges, it is noteworthy to point out that Blogger is a hosted service, WordPress is an application. We could easily compare hosted services such as MySpace and Yahoo 360 against MoveableType and Blosxom. Your arguments will still apply to both sides of issue.
Unlike MySpace and Yahoo 360, with Blogger you can host your blog. As such you can ‘template’ away a lot of your arguments. This is what makes Blogger top in my book.
If you choose to host with Blogger, then you are a fly-by-night blogger at best. WordPress offers you to make your blog somewhat legitimate. Either way, in the eyes of the public, you are what you blog.
Blogger also handles a lot of the Server overhead. Bandwidth issues are not an issue when posting and retrieving. With WordPress, it is handled on your server and if you have Shared Hosting — can be overtaxing.
Commenting in Blogger is User controlled. Most do not even know the options that can be used. I chose to have my comments moderated with the Captcha type verification. As a choice this was only to curtail spam. I can turn any of the options off at my leisure.
I turned on all types of Commenting exceptions in Blogger. I will accept Blogger Profile Comments, Comments with Website Links, and Anonymous.
Comments in Blogger are appended with the Nofollow attribute. This pisses me off. I am looking into a work-around for this. WordPress has a plugin to curtail this nasty microformat.
Images are not a problem in Blogger. They can be appended or uploaded directly to the post. Not sure what you meant by that.
My only concern about images is that users format them improperly, regardless of software. You can refer to my comment in Claire’s tip about this subject. One thing with Blogger is that they are easy to upload, too easy.
As for the questionnaire for uploading images to Blogger, I have never seen it. Uploading images are quick and painless.
Sitemap concerns should never be an issue. Regardless of what type of Blog you are running, the feed on that blog is your ‘sitemap’. It is a blog for goodness sakes.
If you try to set up a sitemap for SE’s like Yahoo or Google, do not waste your time. The feed has already taken care of that for you. And if you try, there is a risk of adding ‘duplicate content’ to their database.
Backup. With a web based app, I can see that being a problem. With Blogger, it is there for all time.
I lapsed in my blogging for over 2 years, and recovered all of my posts from Blogger. They had them on tap.
If this were a WP based blog, I could see where that might be a problem if you did not backup the post data.
There are pros and cons to the two types of blogging software. Most of those distinctions concern adaptability, ease of use, and server overhead.
If you are a beginning blogger, then I would try a hosted solution at Blogger to get your feet wet. As you gain experience then making the push towards WordPress would be the prudent choice.
But, if you are a masochistic Php programmer like me who likes to go against the grain … then God help you.
I still don’t like Blogger
I was a total novice when I installed WordPress on free webspace, and although it didn’t take me long to make the switch to paid-for hosting (about a month) it was very straightforward to setup.
I would always advise people to go straight for WordPress, because I don’t think you really learn anything worthwhile from using Blogger. It has it’s place, don’t get me wrong, but I found it a horrible thing to use.
I realise you can turn captchas off at your leisure, but TBH they turn readers off right from the start.I have 4 complementary anti-spam measures on this blog, but my readers don’t have to jump through hoops to make a comment as a result. I comment on tons of Blogger blogs, and I loathe word verification-it reduces the amount of comments I leave (and sometimes stops me altogether!) and just gets on my nerves.
I have no idea why you would want to host it yourself, as about it’s only plus point for me is the free hosting, but feel free to convince me
This may help you out with removing NoFollow from Blogger (No, it’s not instructions on installing WordPress
)
Oh dont get me wrong Claire. I like WordPress all to heck.
It is just that I started using Blogger and adapted to my site, with some Php twists built in. Presently I am working over-riding the “nofollow” in my comments (will keep you posted on that).
For me, right now, I am on a shared hosting account that is severely limited in resources. I have about 60 sites and growing. I need to eke all I can out of it. And it is not time for me to be switching plans.
But I enjoy hacking the hell out of Blogger, in fact, I have it integrated into a PhpBB backend (without the forum portion of things) … so go figure.
I just noticed your tiny post about the nofollow. Thanx for that info, but I am still using Classic and not the new Blogger. I do think I have a way around it though.
Chris is the Main dude on this blog, i am just a contributor
I have a problem with one-syllable names, but should of noticed that she only has 5 letters in her name. Adjusting my font pitch soes I dont make that mistake again.
‘he’ only has 5 letters!
I am sure he want mind being thought of as female.
[...] me the only choice is WordPress, and you can read my reasons for not liking Blogger if you’re interested, but quite simply Blogger is now pretty old fashioned, lacking in [...]
Leave A Reply