Blogger Review

blogger logoBlogger.com is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows you to instantly publish your information whether it be articles, pictures, videos, personal stuff, or business content. It even works very nicely in conjunction with a ready-made website. As with wordpress.com, you won’t need web hosting, you won’t need any technical skills – it’s very easy!

For example, if you sell wedding shoes so your main site is ecommerce-driven, and you want to quickly set up a blog to provide tips about how to choose the right shoes, Blogger gives you that ability without having to make a new website or using a different script on your existing website. All you do is link to your Blogger page from your regular website and presto, you have an informative blog and your customers are happy!

But, like all free accounts, there are reasons for and reasons against using the site. Here are some of the main ones.

Pros:

  • It is very easy to setup a Blogger account. In fact, logging in with any Google registered email address or other Google account login will work.
  • Choose specific keywords or phrases for the name of your website. They will be attached to blogspot.com becoming a sub-domain of that domain name rather than blogger.com.
  • The blogging interface offers over 60 templates for the layout or design of your blog. You are permitted to edit the template as well, to best suit your purposes.
  • Third party statistic programs and other scripts are allowed.
  • Adsense ads are permitted so you can make some extra cash from your blog.
  • Widgets are available to give the blog more functionality. For example, polls, slide shows, followers, headlines from Google News, and YouTube videos are easily incorporated.
  • Simple drag and drop interface.
  • It is probably a good thing that the blogs are hosted on Google servers as one would expect them to be live most of the time. And one would expect that major problems would be resolved quickly.
  • Content can be exported in order to import into other platforms such as WordPress.
  • Probably the biggest advantage to using blogger.com is you are permitted to buy your own domain name and have the content hosted for free. This can be done right in the beginning or you can choose to make the step-up anytime later.

Cons:

  • Searching the blogs to read content, or conversely trying to get new users by having someone find your blog is not readily available. Most people suggest using “http://blogsearch.google.com”.
  • You must sign up for Picasa Web Albums if you want to browse your online photos.
  • The types of users are restricted to administrators and non-administrators. There are no editor, author, or contributor levels. This is mainly why we moved our Vaporshop Blog away from Blogger in 2014!
  • You cannot edit comments, although they can be moderated meaning you can delete or approve “as-is”.
  • You cannot create static pages, so if you need specific information that should have its own links shown all the time, this is not possible. For example, let’s say you want a short menu with your “about” page, “return policy for products”, or anything else that your users should have quick access to, it must be done as a post.

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