Thinking of switching from Blogger to Wordpress Advantage and Disadvantages

[Atheling]

Hi,

I run a blog Just Add Water, Miniature Painting and Wargaming Blog on Blogger:

https://justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com/

Due to it being difficult for people to follow on Blogger and taking into account the Feedburner will soon be kaput as a means of following too I was thinking of switching over from Blogger to Wordpress.

As an experiment I would probably just do one project, my up and coming Italian Wars stuff to try it out and stick to the free version of WP.

As many of you might have picked up from this post I am not very tech savvy.

So........  I would love to hear, in as simple terms as possible please, what the advantages and disadvantages might be, including keeping followers informed of new posts via email should they choose to do so.

Fire away please

[modelwarrior]

Never had a Blogger account but been using a Wordpress account for a few years without any problems. Seems very easy to use and navigate and Im also not very tech savvy. One point to note is that I post more on facebook and sites like this these days and can see a point in the future where I dont bother with a stand alone site just because of the cost.

[Atheling]

Never had a Blogger account but been using a Wordpress account for a few years without any problems. Seems very easy to use and navigate and Im also not very tech savvy. One point to note is that I post more on facebook and sites like this these days and can see a point in the future where I dont bother with a stand alone site just because of the cost.

I'm not really worried about the cost as I use the site as much as a way to document my stuff all in one place as to communicate with others.

How does the "Follow" mechanism work with Wordpress?

[modelwarrior]

Basically anybody can read one of your posts and if they like it similar to facebook click follow and you will be notified of all new posts. You can also link to this to facebook,pinterest,twitter etc,etc if thats what you want.
 I am similar to you in that I keep the account to document what I have done and if people want to know more they can for example,follow the link below posts on this site. I tend to stay under the radar on facebook(my facebook page has a date of birth,name and thats about it) and post up work and direct people back to the Wordpress site if required.

[Leftblank]

I moved from Blogger to Wordpress.
Importing old blogs to Wordpress was difficult then. Be prepared to do reload pictures etc.
Still, WP is better. Crisper layout, all options. One visitor complained about 'ads', I have an adblocker, never a problem.

[pixelgeek]

If you are hosting the blog yourself then I would recommend Wordpress. If you are going to use the free hosting option then I would recommend staying with Blogger. The editing tools on Wordpress (free) are now quite a PITA to use. As well they are commercializing every aspect of the site. My pop-up gallery images now have ads for the Wordpress app on them.

I was quite happy with it prior to the pandemic but they have been rolling out 'features' that make it less fun to write and blog.

A secondary issue is that I believe that you will have better luck promoting and getting comments on a Blogger site as almost everyone has a google account they can use to comment. Not a lot of people comment or follow Wordpress sites.

[Atheling]

Thanks guys, quite a lot to consider....

Let me see if I have this straight?

On one hand Wordpress can be followed quite easily as a "follower"- followers will receive emails to keep up with posts (if they are interested)

Following on Blogger is pretty much a no-no or is there some way I can get around this without switching from Blogger to Wordpress?

Thanks for your help thus far- appreciated 

[pixelgeek]

On one hand Wordpress can be followed quite easily as a "follower"- followers will receive emails to keep up with posts (if they are interested)

You can sign up for email notifications or if you use the Wordpress app you can follow sites there and it will give you notifications in the app. It defaults to using email but you can change that.

Following on Blogger is pretty much a no-no or is there some way I can get around this without switching from Blogger to Wordpress?

If you have a google account I thought it was simple to follow blogs? Did something change?

[Atheling]

You can sign up for email notifications or if you use the Wordpress app you can follow sites there and it will give you notifications in the app. It defaults to using email but you can change that.

If you have a google account I thought it was simple to follow blogs? Did something change?

It hasn't happened for me for many years- using the usual follower button that is.

[OB]

Interesting thread.  I've been thinking of doing this too.  My follow and email alert functions on blogger have not worked for months.  The email alert function is getting deleted in July by Blogger.

[Atheling]

Interesting thread.  I've been thinking of doing this too.  My follow and email alert functions on blogger have not worked for months.  The email alert function is getting deleted in July by Blogger.

That's my concern really. Blogger have slowly make redundant various features on their format including spell check for some unearthly reason 

[Atheling]

[3] However, the RSS subscription system is still there.  This is the smart way to follow lots of sites not just Blogger.  Get a free account at feedly.com and you'll be surprised how easy it is.  Plus you won't end up with a packed email inbox.

[4] You don't have to have a Google or Wordpress account to use a public RSS feed so it's open to everyone.  Much better.

Hope that helps.

So, I can add an RSS Feed on blogger Martin?

I'm a complete tech luddite..... 

[pixelgeek]

[2] E-mail subscriptions are indeed going as they were provided by Feedburner and this is being scaled back. 

Given how long it has been since they canned RSS Reader I am amazed that Feedburner lasted this long.

Aside from how difficult it would be to move from Wordpress to Blogger, the one thing that really does stop me is Google's willingness to quickly pull the plug on environments like this.

[Atheling]

Yes and you can add a widget to publicise it.  To enable RSS look in Settings | Site feed.

The "enable RSS" doesn't seem to be there under Settings in blogger 

[Atheling]

These are the settings you need to change:

Thanks Martin, thanks for coming to my rescue mate.

That is all done now.

Do I need to do anything else to set up the RSS feed for Followers?

I did say I was a total tech Luddite