CHOICE OF PLATFORM - Blogger or Wordpress

The first step towards blogging is having an idea/thought to blog about. You can take any & every topic under the sun and make it interesting by your write ups. Blog is a place where you can have your own democracy. You can write, publicize and use it for your own as well as everyone’s good. Questions to ask yourself before you select any topic to blog are as follows:

• 1)      What do you know about it?
• 2)      Do you wish to promote, present, sell, publicize or create awareness?
• 3)      How long do you plan to run the blog? Whether it’s a blog having a time limit to some Event (e.g. Olympics), a newsreel (Citizen Reporter), a static blog full of info, a travelogue, a community blog with discussions, a tutorial or learning blog, a personal blog or your own unique kind?
• 4)      How do you categorize you blog? Find various categories in DMOZ, craiglist or Indiblogger. You can also refer other famous Blog sites like Technorati or Alexa.
• 5)      How much you enjoy doing this?

Having decided a Blog Topic, comes the most important task of choice of Blogging Platform. Most popular Blogging Platforms are Live Journal, Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad but the choice really distills down to choosing between Blogger or Wordpress .

Blogger is powered by Google. So you know that all your Google services (Be it Picasa, Adsense, Reader, Analytics, Webmaster Central, SMS Channel, Gadgets, Search etc) can be coupled with your blog within no time. Blogger provided infinite customization and you can really have complete control over the look and feel of you blog here. With Google’s new Friend Connect Gadget Series, You can have the most awaited link between your Social Network and Web Audience. With Blogger you can endlessly edit themes, customize interface and experiment with new SEO techniques since you have direct access to your Theme Template Code.

Wordpress comes in two flavors:  wordpress.com and wordpress.org . The first one (wordpress.com) is free Blogging platform powered by Wordpress (An Automattic Enterprise) which allows you to make your own blog and run it on wordpress servers. Wordpress is multiuser Blogging software that allows everyone to make blog, customize it (to some extent) and run it. Whereas wordpress.org is single user version of Wordpress.com Open Source Blogging Software provided by Wordpress for individual use that you can deploy on you Web server. What this means is that if you have bought Hosting Services from some Provider then you can use wordpress.org Software (The latest being Ver2.8.6.1) to have Wordpress Blog running your site/blog.  In case, you don’t have one – no need to worry. You still have the free wordpress.com Blogging Platform to host your blogs.

We will be concentrating on Wordpress.com for now and later move on to wordpress.org!

Wordpress doesn’t provide much customizations and control over the interface and working. It has very simple and one of the best detailed blogging dashboard. It’s a good choice for a blogger who doesn’t want to get into technicalities of xhtml or CSS and simply want to blog without worrying much about technical aspect of the blogging. The power of Wordpress lies in its audience. Since wordpress.com doesn’t allow advertising, There are very less splogs (Spam + Blog = Splogs) on wordpress.com as compared to Blogger where Splogs swarm for money. May be that’s the reason behind the serious audience of wordpress.com  and high Page rank of its Tags. If you are a frequent Googler (which we all are in some sense!), you will find many searches ending up with results like “/wordpress/SearchTerm”. The SearchTerm here refers to the keyword you searched for in Google and the Post on wordpress.com that were tagged with that particular SearchTerm. These wordpress tags conceal lots of potential; the same tag with same content on any other Blogging Platform would be far behind in Search Results on Google. This is my personal view and should not be taken for a fact.

Wordpress also has a very good Commenting System. It acquired Intense Debate – a corporation known for its Comment Services last year only. Because of less power in user’s hand, Wordpress blogs have a clean look and run mostly on quality contents instead of SEO tricks. So if you are a writer or produce content, Wordpress is the best place to be discovered. The very simplicity of wordpress.com becomes the reason why the advanced users don’t prefer it. For those who want the power in their hands, Blogger is the perfect weapon!

Besides the above basic features, the following features also play an important role:

1. 1.)    Back Up
2. 2.)    Export/Import
3. 3.)    Permitted Widgets
4. 4.)    Stat System
5. 5.)    TOS (Terms of Services)

From now on Wordpress refers to wordpress.com ; wherever I need to mention wordpress.org I will mention it explicitly.

1.)    Both Blogger and Wordpress don’t have satisfactory back up options. In case your blog is banned for reason or the other, your whole data just vanishes into thin air! I prefer Blog Backup Online for real time backup of my blog. Blog Backup Online provides space up to 50 MB for backup storage in free edition. You can also download a copy of backups and save it on your hard disk.

2.)    Blogger and Wordpress both give a content backup of Style and Content in XML format for download. Wordpress gives the backup for download in its new WXR (Wordpress XML) format that is not compatible with Blogger Export/Import Tool. Thus Blogger provides better migration options.

3.)    Blogger features numerous Widgets (mostly free) for your Blogger Blogs while on Wordpress there are few limited widgets which although being complete in it self leave much to be desired.

4.)    An inbuilt Stat System is one thing that Blogger has been missing since the dawn of Blogging era. We have to look forward to free Web Stats services like Hitstas, freecounter etc for Web Statistics. In this field, Wordpress outruns Blogger. Wordpress gives one of the best in class web stats tracking system which feature day by day report, comparison, most read, hot on wordpress and its own personal ranking to blogs. It has detailed Day-Basis, Monthly-Basis and Annual stats. It also shows most searched keywords, incoming and outgoing links, most popular posts and trackbacks in its stats page on Dashboard. It’s like having an interface of Google Webmaster Central within your Wordpress Dashboard. No doubt Wordpress outruns Blogger in Stat domain.

5.)    TOS (Terms of Services) are yet another overlooked part while deciding the platform for Blogging. They do matter a lot and in the long run, it’s the TOS part that gets you banned and there’s no way out. However, if you have been smart enough to have a Blog Backup Online account connected to your Wordpress/Blogger Blog, You wont lose the data at all but the domain and hence the Google Juice will be gone forever. So do read those gritty numerous lines before signing up for Blogging Services.

By now based on your needs, you will be able to decide which Blogging Platform to choose. But still in gist, I would recommend the following based on usage type:

For general users who just need to be free from technical jargon and code melodrama, Wordpress is the solution. For advanced users who need to get the most from the least, Blogger is the way out.  Blogger provides ways to enhance your skills and prepare you so that later on you can buy your domain and have a good Hosting Service Provider to host your own site.

More about “How to Host your site” and wordpress.org later.

Feel free to ask any questions and give suggestions. I will be more than happy to attend to them.

You can meet me here:

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Previous Posts:

How to become a Blogger | My Introduction

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How to Become a Blogger | My Introduction

After hours of helping people make a killer blog and get higher visibility on Google, I decided to start this “How to Become a Blogger” Series. This Blog will consist of my own experiences and experiments in Blogging and are completely based on what I tried and turned out to be true (so far!). I will be covering most of the basic and few advanced topics in next few write-ups. Feel free to ask any question/clarification or if you want any post on a specific topic. I will be more than happy to assist.

First let me tell about my-blog-self, I am Tarun Kumar Jaiswal, mostly known by the name “Tarun Reflex” (Reflex is not my surname, It’s just my handle J), I started blogging on Yahoo 360 in 2003. Then moved to Blogger with my first blog “Tarun Reflex | Personal, Political and Technical” which is still running and had over 5,00,000 hits. It contains my personal rants and musing along with technical discussion/tutorial. I also covered some leading topics related to Indians (e.g. Six Pay Commission) and Technical news (e.g. launch of iPhone, Google’s new services etc). Its’ my principal blog and I tried most of the tricks and tweaks on this blog only. So it looks a bit garbled.

Next to pursue my technical interest, I started “Tarun Reflex | Tech Perk” and “Windows Help Center”.Tech Perk mainly contains XP to VISTA migration assistance tutorials like “How to Run Oracle on Vista” whereas Windows Help Center has system speed up tips & tricks . It also contains all the hacks on Windows XP that I published in my two series “Windows XP – Tips and Tricks” E-book in Summer-2006. It has more than 300 such hacks that will make work easier for a general user and advanced customizations for a power user.

Then came one of my personal favorites “Tarun Reflex” Wordpress Blog. It was a non-commercial blog dedicated to Indian Govt. Employees and had some flavors of technical and literary spices like some book reviews and new technological updates. It got Page Rank 4 in 3 months and had over 15,00,000 visitors. It’s featured in “Blog of the Day” List on official Wordpress Blog for 3 days in August 2008. It has had over 58,000 hits in a single day! However, It was banned by Wordpress due to some policy violations. It was about some book download links. You can still search for “Tarun Reflex” on Google and find this blog right on the top of the list.

“Tarun Reflex” Wordpress Blog helped me a lot in learning about marketing and publicity. I experimented with Email Branding, RSS Updates & Customizations, Viral Marketing, Incentives and contest schemes, Audience Capturing via this blog. Due to larger audience, I was able to perceive the general behavioral aspects of audience with respect to their needs & expectation from a blog/website. It made me realize the importance of Social Networking and Social Bookmarking. Because of all these experiments, I believe this blog got this much audience and exposure on Google. The Blog was on wordpress.com domain so customizations were very limited. It’s a very good example of having your Blog/website visible on Google without having html or SEO codes in your Design templates. And all the credit goes to Social Bookmarking as well as email branding to name a few! The gist is to make your Blog available in all formats at all the time, Be it mobile version,Facebook Notes,RSS,SMS updates,email,Tweets,Diggs,Blinks and trackbacks!

In winters of 2008, I had the opportunity to meet online a very good and creative person Neil from USA. He had just started his blog by the name – 1000 Awesome Things .It motivated me to list 1000 awesome things about India. Anyone living in India will undoubtedly agree to the fact that there is more to this country than others can see. One can visit India for a week or two & get a view that is like a view of a river through the mist above. As some sociologist made a hierarchy of understanding Inter Cultural and Cross Country relationships & interactions as: Action > Behavior > Thought Pattern > Culture > Values, where Action forms the first impression of a country and its people. My Blog: 1000 Things About India .On this blog I write what I feel about India and what’s so unique about it. We all have been hearing since our very childhood that “India is a country that’s one of its kind” and that “There are much more differences among different states of India than countries in Western hemisphere”. This blog is an attempt to enlist those features that make us so Unique, so Indian! This is a blog that I am proud to own.

Neil’s Blog has been featured on BBC, NEWSWEEK and many media agencies of international repute. Personally, I count his blog at par with PostSecret and Found .

I am an avid reader and personally love to read and share what I read. I always prefer hardcopy of a book over EBooks and mostly buy books even after I already have its electronic format. A book is a treasure that never diminishes. In summer of 2005, I found lots of people on the Internet searching for EBooks. There were posts all over the Bulletin Boards and Discussion Forums regarding Book requests. What I found ironic was the fact that all the books were available on the Internet but there was absolutely no order. No repository of links or available EBooks. So I started my two Esnips accounts: “Tarun Reflex” and “Reflex Tarun”. Both witnessed more than 15,00,000 hits before getting shut down. You can still find me on Esnips here . After discontinuing my Esnips Accounts, I decided to gather my audience and started an Orkut Community : Books and Books that will provide Weekly Deliveries of EBooks , Updates ,Reviews and answer to reader’s question about availability of EBooks and links along with bunching together like minded readers & having a good time. Now, this community has more than 10,500 members, answers to more than 5000 queries, 10,000+ EBook Download Links contributed by myself & other members of the community & Email List of more than 3000 subscriber who have registered for Weekly EBooks Delivery.

With growth in weekly subscribers, It became difficult for me to keep up with the growth rate of the community .Also the links posted in the Community were accessible to members only and were not searchable on the Google so in spite of having an organized collection of links and books, They were limited to few thousand readers only. To solve both these issues, I started a new support blog for BOOKS AND BOOKS Community by the name: Ebookspedia . It contains all that is available on Community in an organized way, tagged with appropriate keywords and searchable on Google. The three very basis of my “Books and Books” group are: Books and Books on Orkut, Books and Books on Blogger and Books and Books on Esnips .

Along with these three principal axis, I use Google Groups (not so efficient), Groups on Shelfari (A social networking site for Book Lovers), Facebook and FeedBurner. Among different audiences with entirely different reading tastes, The Romance Books Fan (or Mills and Boon Fans) have been one of the most regular visitors to my Blogs. As a notion of my thankfulness towards them, I dedicated Romance Books (Mills and Boon Book Blog) to them in May 2009. It contains links to my uploads on Rapidshare. It has a simple, easy-to-use, romantic look and feel for rich user experience.

Inspired by Abhinav Bindra’s Gold in Olympics, I started a Blog on London 2012 Summer Olympic. It will track the timeline to Olympics, the preparations and finally the games themselves.

Everyday, I receive loads and loads of email. While some of them have to be answered, some are just forwards. And believe me, the kind of forwards that I get are very interesting. However, I rarely forward emails to other so to make these general forwards available I launched Amazing Email Forwards Blog. Mostly, I post on this blog via Email so it is optimized for simple look.

Indian Budget 2009: This Blog consists of Union Budget and Railway Budget information along with download links for complete Budget report and announcements. It has section wise important announcements and new policies. “1000 Movies to See Before you Die” is my another blog.

The Indian Initiatives: 

Indian Initiatives is all about new policies & plans by Govt. Of India and new startups by Indian. It aims to bridge the semantic gap between the ‘Common Man’ and Government by spreading awareness about new Govt. Policies and how they could be useful for us. “Indian Initiatives” encourages new entrepreneurs and provides them a platform to voice their opinions and ideas.

For People: 

We are researching on web search patterns and intellignet information retrieval techniques . We aim to combine the three dimesions of Information – “How” ,”What” and “When” and provide you complete information in time and on the go!

For Government:

We bring into light the Government policies that embody in themselves a huge untapped potential of social change and development. By unfolding the jargaon, we present the central idea of policies in front you so that you can understand it in a DIY(Do it yourself) manner.

For Entrepreneurs:

We encourage new Entrepreneurs and strive to support them by voicing their ideas and opinions. Let us know about you new venture and we will do an independent third party review of your business idea and showcase it on our site in front of vast audience.

For NGOs (Non Government Organizations):

We support NGOs and provide them a platform where they can put forth their noble causes & stir awareness about their mission. NGOs can provide us with thier description and we will showcase them here, making their work known to the Web-World.


For more info on Indian Initiatives , you can contact me here or Register here.

You can also find me here:

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