When searching through Google's list of products, it's interesting that Blogger is never displayed. I use Blogger frequently and have several blogs that I maintain on that platform. I never get any comments for any of my posts and that's alright as I use these blogs as a way of organising my thoughts on various topics. I am most active on my mathematics blog. It never occurred to me that very few people were actually using Blogger anymore. I started using it back in 2006 or 2007 and, except for one blog in WordPress that I abandoned, it's the only service I've ever used.
This article appeared in TechCrunch back in May of 2018 and it really opened my eyes:
Blogger, the blogging platform Google acquired back in 2003, is somehow still alive and kicking, even though few people remember it still exists. But alive it is — and it’s even getting some updates to its Google+ integration that will see all those 20 people still on Google+ rejoice.
After a year of inactivity, Blogger’s own news blog sprung to live this morning with a brief update that lays out the changes. Google calls this a “spring cleaning,” and we all know what that means: shutting down features.
You probably don’t care, but gone from Blogger are support for third-party gadgets, the Next Blog feature and the polling widget. Soon, OpenID support will be gone, as well, and Textcube.com is also shutting down. What is Textcube.com, you ask? It’s a Korean blogging service Google acquired back in 2008.
But there are also new features, which I’m guessing the sole two engineers still working on this project slaved over for the last year.
Blogger’s Google+ widget integration (yes, try not to laugh) will be transformed into HTML widgets to “give you more flexibility in how you share and see your followers.” Fifteen years after acquiring the service, Blogger now also supports logging in with multiple accounts. Google also today noted that the Blogger infrastructure has moved to Cloud Spanner, Google’s newest database service.
In the near future, you can expect a new video management feature, too. Exciting stuff.
It’s surprising that Blogger is still around. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Blogger site in my searches, and it sure doesn’t have a lot of mindshare. Google also has let the platform linger and hasn’t integrated it with any of its newer services. The same thing could be said for Google+, too, of course. Google cuts some services because they have no users and no traction. That could surely be said for Blogger and Google+, but here they are, still getting periodic updates. I think the writing is on the wall, though, and I wouldn’t expect them to survive the next major Google spring cleaning.
This could account in part for the complete lack of comments on any of my blogs. It also prompts me to consider perhaps migrating to other blogging platforms. What if Google decides to shut down Blogger as the article above suggests it might? I don't mind Blogger as a platform probably because I'm so familiar with it but I particularly dislike Google Sites. I find it clunky and awkward.
WordPress.org is touted as the best web/blog hosting service with the following advantages (according to this review):
- WordPress.org gives you control over every aspect of your website.
- You can grow your blog and add extra features like forums, online store, paid memberships, and sell online courses. This makes WordPress the best blogging platform to make money.
- There are thousands of free themes available for WordPress. This allows you to create a beautiful website that stands apart from the crowd. Most popular WordPress themes come with built-in customization options that gives you full design control.
- You also get access to more than 59,000 free WordPress plugins. These plugins are like apps for your WordPress blog that allow you to add features like contact forms, galleries, etc. See our list of must have WordPress plugins for all websites.
- WordPress is search engine friendly. You can easily create SEO friendly URLs, categories, and tags for your posts. Plus, there’re a good number of great SEO plugins for additional optimization.
- You can easily enable Google Analytics powered website analytics in WordPress, so you can see the stats that matter. This helps you grow your new blog traffic and subscribers.
- Last but not least, WordPress’ drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create any type of content on your blog site. It also has options to embed dynamic content like videos, social media feeds, Google Adsense, graphs, charts, and more without any technical know how.
WordPress.org is the world’s most popular blogging software. Started in 2003, WordPress now powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet.Note: It’s easy to confuse WordPress.org with WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting service mentioned later in this list. See our guide on the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.WordPress.org is an open source free blogging platform that allows you to build your website or blog within minutes.It is a self-hosted solution which means that you will need to sign up with a WordPress hosting provider. WordPress is a great option if you want to have full control over your blog’s future.
The idea is appealing but I should consider whether I even want to keep blogging, let alone have a dedicated hosting site. It's something to sleep on. At the moment, I'm preoccupied with Raspberry Pi and Linux Mint so any decisions will have to wait. Meanwhile, this video provides a good introduction to bluehost for anyone, like myself, who is considering using it. The guy speaks very fast so I found that lowering the speed to 0.75 makes it easy to listen to what he's saying. A non-native speaker might well find him incomprehensible.
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