For those who are active on the blogging sites, must be having a fair knowledge about both WordPress and Blogger. Both are open-source blogging sites, but the only question that swirls in everybody’s mind is that — which blogging platform is the best CMS available today? WordPress being the best at CMS, also has easy access to various facilities and is stable as well, whereas on the other side, as the name suggests, Blogger is Google’s free blogging site for private or multi-user blogs that is easy to learn, implement and use. One might require some plugins and widgets to enhance the site for delivering interactive and interesting content to the readers. Plugins are written in PHP scripting language that modify, customize and optimize your blog well as it is an effective tool that marks an extension to the functionality of WordPress. Widgets, on the other hand is a tool to enhance the appearance of a blog or website. Widget is also called ‘sidebar widget‘, as it enables to add on various design elements on the sidebar of a blog or website. It is administered by using a drag and drop interface in the admin area.
Protection from Spamming
We always look for tools that protect our blog from malwares and spamming. Nobody would want automatic form submissions or spam comments on his/her site or blog. Hence, anti-spam tool is an essential feature for blogs. Luckily, WordPress and Blogger, both have anti-spam solution. WordPress can have anti-spam tools like Akismet, security ninja and short comment filter, whereas Blogger counts on Google spam filtering technologies as it does not have any external anti-spam tools.
The Backup Plan
Nobody would want their content to be corrupt, wrecked or misplaced. So, there is no harm in playing safe by keeping an archival copy of the content as backup. The backup plan is a vital feature as it would not let your hard work suffer. This essential function is performed by both platforms. Plugins on WordPress like WP Backup Complete and VaultPress Status provide all backup facilities. Whereas, Blogger caters the import and export feature in the tools of the blog’s settings.
Sitemap – SEO and XML
Here we are referring to on-page SEO only. Many site owners do not prefer using plugins or widgets in SEO, so they do it by hand itself that consumes a lot of time, energy and might also lead to missing of vital points. WordPress again has the solution tools like SEO Smart Links, SEO Super Comments and SEO Friendly Images (add alt attribute). While Blogger is a bit lagging in this, but webmaster tool always acts as a help line for the users.
Monitoring Traffic : Google Analytics
With rising competition in the market, monitoring traffic has become a vital function for any business. Here, Google Analytics is the universal tool in performing this function. With monitoring traffic being the essential function to perform, WordPress and Blogger have come out with various plugins that carry each segment’s stats. Plugins in WordPress : Cleveritics plugin provides a global web analytics, Social Metrics checks performance over social networking sites and WP Post Views exhibits the count of visitors on each post. Blogger too is rich in analytics options and its tools are : Blog Patrol, Popular Posts and Blog Stats.
Forms Formation
Forms like contact forms, order forms(e-commerce) and registration forms, any one of these forms is necessary in a blog. WordPress caters a variety of form builders like 123 Contact Form, Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7. On the other hand, Blogger does not allow server-side scripting and totally depends on third-party services.
E-mail Export, Newsletter
Plugins on WordPress like Joe’s Web Tools enable to export the e-mail addresses that is provided by visitors and Newsletters send messages with the desired template. Blogger caters Google Friends Connect that proposes a newsletter option, but is bounded to this network only.
Share Through Social Networks
Social networking site is the best socializing medium for any person. These networking sites have numerous options to share or synchronize with public. They cater a share button in them to do real-time sharing. WordPress plugins for social media are : Walleria, Social Box and definitely Sexy Bookmarks. Blogger caters Social Feeds Plus efficient widgets for each network.
Subscribe To Feed Yourself
To keep yourself updated with all the information about a particular site, you need to subscribe! Both WordPress and Blogger have the one name in common for this category i.e. Feedburner. Feed styler plugin in WordPress provides subscription with CSS and background images by creating custom subscription boxes, whereas other plugins provide subscription through You tube, Facebook, etc. In Blogger, you need to manage or administer the subscriptions on your own through E-mails. You can also create a custom subscription box widget with own CSS, through a different method though yet with the same result in the end.
Managing Comments
Handling and managing comments is a vital task for all blogs. Luckily, both WordPress and Blogger provide this facility with various plugins and widgets. WordPress caters facilities like Facebook comments, subscribing to comments, showing recent comments and the popular plugin CommentLuv. Blogger has widgets like: Easy comments, Recent comments, Top commentators and Disquss.
More WordPress Resources
– Ultimate List of Top 20 Must-Have Killer WordPress Plugins
– Ultimate Collection of 10 Stunning yet Free Premium WordPress Themes
– The Easiest Method to Add a Favicon to your WordPress Blog
Content : The ‘Heartbeat’
We all know that content is the ‘heartbeat’ of a blog. Content needs to be user-friendly and to mold it in that way a blogger needs various devices to interlink posts, categorize the most important posts, put videos, perform searches, etc. Plugins on WordPress for these purposes are Insights, Most Popular Posts, Similar Posts, Snazzy Archives, Review Ratings, Editorial Calendar, VidEmbed, Vimeo, Video Gallery. Blogger‘s content widgets are Popular posts, Related posts, Recent posts with thumbnails, Tag/label cloud, Picasa, Simple search and Archive calendar.
Communication : Connection Source
Apart from being a publishing platform, blog is a communication platform as well. It enables communication among community members and exchange messages from administrator to visitors. In WordPress, you just need to activate your Message Bar or VideoWhisper Video Conference plugin whereas in Blogger, Google Talk, Meebo Me, Skype, and many other widgets are available.
WRAPPING UP
WordPress plugins and Blogger widgets are equally effective and perform interesting and essential operations. Both are free blogging platforms so you can use both these CMS systems once and then choose any of them for future according to your taste.
Author Bio: Tony is working as a WordPress Developer at ValueCoders. One can hire WordPress Developers from ValueCoders for their WordPress Development needs.