I reckon there are more blogs out there using Blogger.com than Wordpress.
I started blogging with Blogger.com too before converting to Wordpress recently. I have numerous search engine optimized Blogger templates and I decided to give them away.
I’ve written a quick review on Blogger Beta at Free Directory Submission: Review on Beta Blogger Upgrade.
The review was made after upgrading FreeDirectorySubmission.blogspot.com to Blogger Beta. There are new features that I really like. And there are things that I longer can do with the new Blogger Beta platform.
Overall, I think it is a good thing because with the new platform, I can blog quicker and I also like the Denim layout - until I learn how to tweak the XML to enhance it! I believe the information can be found at Blogger Help on Page Elements Tags for Layouts but I haven’t got the time to study this help page yet.
Actually, even if you use the new layout as it is, they are already SEO friendly. I like the Denim layout and have done some small customization on the HTML template which you can easily save(Download Full Template) to your computer harddisk with a single click. That’s another new feature that I like since I have the tendency to tweak the HTML codes very frequently.
So I am not going to upgrade this blog to Blogger Beta - it will be migrated to Wordpress when I find the time to learn all the commands and tags needed to do the required customization.
There are many reasons for me wanting to migrate to Wordpress - 2 important reasons being the enhanced SEO friendliness and Trackback function.
Also, Wordpress is more powerful. There are many plugins available to extend the functionalities. I could also save some time whenever I tweak the template because there is no need to regenerate all the pages and upload to my server again and again.
However, the move is not easy. I have been losing sleep for the past 2 nights trying to customize Wordpress theme or template for TIMMGuru.com. I want to use the existing design and layout. And it was not easy to convert the template. The Wordpress theme is far more complicated than Blogger’s template. I have to search the documentation and learn the right commands and tags. I find the Conditional Tags necessary to customize the sidebar. As you can see, the display of this sidebar is different on the main page, individual post page and archive page. So I’ll need to do some progaming logic to control what appears on which page.
The basic type of pages for Wordpress are the
You can control what to appear in each of these pages! Now, flexibility comes with complexity!
I’ve finally completed the new web design and layout for this blog. Don’t you think it looks better than the previous design? The last time I fiddled with Blogger template was at least 6 months ago and it took me nearly a week to customise a design template. (more…)