I haven't been able to post anything in 5 years. I wanted to, but I never got around to it. Mine wasn't a popular blog. I had a few likes and comments but that was it. I guess it wasn't that useful to anyone. or attractive enough to be read. however looking back, it was fun writing it. So I decided to try and write something again. at least for myself.

wordpress.com to blogger


My blog was on wordpress.com. There wasn't anything wrong with it. It was even prettier than this one. But if I wanted to add a custom domain later, I would have had to buy a premium version and a domain name on top of that. and with blogger, it's just the domain name and there will be no ads. Also, I thought with Blogger I would be able to customize it however I wanted. or so I thought.

making an account is easy enough you just need a google account and you can log in just like that. and making a blog is a few clicks job. then you have to pick a theme. which is a bit tricky.

Choosing a theme


Unlike wordpress,com themes that come with blogger are not that great. it's either too much or not enough. they also look dated. it's almost like there haven't been any updates or much thought put into it. For third-party themes, free ones have attribution, and the code is either encoded or harder to play around with. Attribution is okay. It's fair to promote yourself when you are giving your hard work for free. I guess You can buy a theme and ask them to set it up properly. or making your own theme using a GitHub code and elbow grease is also an option. but if you want something and want it to just work with simple clicks it's hard. some look great but with light gray text on a white background and small text. but when you change them they don't look great anymore and some are buggy or some assets are missing. but there are good ones that work out of the box and are free like the one I'm using. but WordPress has more polished and less buggy themes. Not to mention a wider selection.

after selecting a theme I wanted to import my older posts because it looks lonely without any posts.

Importing posts from wordpress.com

 
 

It's supposed to be a hassle-free and easy import and export of xml files. But it didn't work for me. I managed to export a xml file which according to wordpress has all my posts in it. blogger also seems to accept it as a working file but after a success message, nothing happens. nothing was imported. even after fiddling with it, I couldn't figure it out so I had to copy and paste it manually. It was fine since I didn't have many posts.

editing and writing


the text editor in blogger is good. images are a bit tricky though. sometimes they just don't float to a side. and there is no built-in gallery. these things can be fixed by adding proper CSS to the themes and editing the HTML of the post. but the HTML editor isn't vs code it's a jumbled mess. In blogger, featured images have to be the first image. I guess one could hide it when viewing the post. but again it's extra work.


in conclusion. wordpress.com just works out of the box but has restrictions while blogger offers more freedom, but it needs lots of fiddling around and a bit of know-how.