I finally decided to bite the bullet and make the change from using Blogger as my CMS to Wordpress.
Previously my reasons for using Blogger:
- Universal search integration within Google
- Preferred search placement within Google (Short-term pagerank inflation for new pages – [see: Google Operating System][and: New York Times] with apparently preferential treatment to their blogs)
- Cross-platform posting – Just about any internet-connected computer, via e-mail, texting, etc.
- Security – Wordpress is vulnerable from time to time
- Flexibility – Blog can be moved from Blogger’s servers to my servers by changing settings and re-publishing.
Drawbacks:
- Lack of quality plug-ins
- Lack of Web 2.0 functionality – tags, categories, etc
- Data ownership – I’m comfortable with much of my data existing in “The Cloud” but I want to own and control my content.
So, why the change? I wanted to host all of my content on my website, seamlessly integrating my professional and personal content, without losing anything in usability. I wanted to add things like tag clouds, keywords, topics, etc. I wanted some of the plug-ins I’ve run into on other blogs – like automatic e-mail replys for messages from first-timers, etc. I wanted a better theme system. And I wanted to use some of the new iPhone apps for blogging on the go.
So far so good. The ‘famous 5-minute install’ took less than that, and I had the bulk of the work done in under an hour. I’ve now got a slightly customized publicly available theme, and I moved most of my important posts from my old blog to this one. Next steps: integrate my professional portfolio, personal photography and other content.