Quick intro then we’ll dive right in to bashing one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world: Blogger (aka Blogspot (the platform is called Blogger, the free blogs are hosted at ***.blogspot.com) hence the confusion). Blogger was created by Google and this leads to two obvious conclusions: 1) it is free to use 2) it lacks features.
Its inherent freeness keeps it popular and widely used, but ultimately Blogger should be a way to learn the ropes, not climb them. Over the last few years I’ve helped build dozens of blogs, both personal and corporate. Although I do my best to steer clear from using Blogger, it happens. Often. And I’ll find myself stuck with limitations and pushing through work arounds
So please keep in mind that if you currently use Blogger for your blog, I mean no disrespect and it says nothing negative about your blog. Because maybe some of these things aren’t important to you, but they are dramatically important to me, and that’s why I (disclosure) use WordPress.
10 Shortcomings of Blogger Blogs:
- Page support. Ever tried to create an “About Me” page? Or a “Contact”? Or any of the pages that should be completely standard in blogs? Apparently Blogger doesn’t see these things as necessary. This is by far the dumbest oversight for the platform. There are ways to do it, but why should you have to trick your platform into letting you do something so standard?
- “Read More” option. Yes, I’m well aware there’s a work around (that requires writing a brief code snippet on each post… not good for the basic users), but why should we have to work around? Why can’t it just work?
- Easier image alt-texting. The only way to play nice with the search engines is to go into HTML mode and manually type in ALT tags? Really?
- More advanced template customization. There is a relatively small template development community for blogger, mainly because the options are so limited. But one template page containing all the blog’s code? Annoying. Give me external CSS please.
- Simpler template customization. Yeah, I know. But the limited widget options aren’t bad, but if Blogger really is the platform for the masses then it should have many, many more options and a public repository of widgets.
- HTML stripping. Ever tried pasting text into a Blogger post and have it come out with some of the funkiest characters ever? This is less Blogger’s fault than it is Microsoft’s but it’s still really damn annoying and is the only blog platform I’ve used that still has problems with this.
- Improved permission support. Many blogs have multiple authors contributing content. Blogger has two sets of permissions: Admin or Not Admin. For a company blog you need an admin and you need permissions and authorities and notifications and more to set up a work flow. Blogger doesn’t have any of this.
- Scheduled posts. I’ve gotta be wrong about this one. At least I hope I’m wrong. But Blogger doesn’t allow you to schedule posts for the future. This just makes no sense to me. (Oh, but it is in “beta” apparently).
- Categories and Tags. Each serve a very important but separate purpose. Blogger gives you the option of Tags or nothing. Not much of a choice.
- SEO support. WordPress has dozens of plugins made specifically for search engine improvements. Metatagging, better sitemap building, titling, keywords, everything. Blogger does not. It actually makes these things either difficult or impossible. Maybe Blogger knows how bad some of its blogs are and doesn’t want to subject them to the public…
Look, in the end successful blogging is about good content. No amount of flashy design or advanced site functionality will pull in readers if your content is lacking. Conversely, there are a lot of very popular blogs published through Blogger, all because they have great content. The blogging platform is ultimately irrelevant - this post is really just about making that platform work for you.
If you’re new to blogging and not yet ready to take off the training wheels, start up in Blogger. It’s free, simple, and basic enough to not screw up. But once you’ve grown tired of its limits, read this guide, and take your blog to a new level.
What else do you wish were included in Blogger?
Lastly, I’m on vacation the rest of the week, but will be back in town for PodCamp Boston - hope to see many of you there!
