If you have any kind of Google account, you can very easily get and create a Blogger account and if you don't have a Google account, it's pretty easy to get and make one.
Now if you're new to the blogging scene, I bet you will enjoy your experience... at first. It's fun and easy. But as time goes on and you start to understand more about the world of blogging and want to demand more from your blogging platform, opinions start to change.
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Even though I say you may start wanting more, there still are plenty of high-end personalities that use the simplicity of Blogger to get their message out and it works for them. It's their primary venue. It connects and posts (integrated) to Google+ quite easily, and with enough tinkering, Blogger posts can be automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook via 3rd party products.
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But Sometimes The Frustrations Dim The Enthusiasm
When you work interactively with blogger and you go live with a post, you then have the option to post the same content straight to your Google+ page for the site.
But if you schedule a post for a later time to go live (I do that often), that doesn't happen.
Blogger used to give you a post to G+" option when you updated a post, but that does not happen any more.
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I don't work in Blogger itself. I craft my content outside of it (in notepad) then paste the content. (I work in an environment where I can count my words, to make sure I stay above the Google SEO recommended minimum of three hundred words per article.)
Therein lies most of my issues.
Unlike any other blogging platform that I can paste into, Blogger starts to cause issues for me from the get go when I paste.
Once pasted, if I decide I need to add content and try to add lines to the content, the first time I hit 'enter' the linefeed works. After that, it does not. I am then forced to hold the shift key while hitting enter. (Nope, don't know why!)
And sometimes, hitting return to add a line, pops the user down to the last line of the article. I'm not finding a consistent cause for this, except that it consistently happens.
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Working with images can be pretty easy, if you add only one. But if you start wanting to add more throughout an article, SOMETIMES, no matter where your cursor is (Which to me, would indicate where you want the inserted image), the image adds itself to the head of the article.
And finding images from your blog is trippy. When I pull up a list of images from the blog, they're rarely listed visually in chronological order. So good luck.
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As far as formatting goes, it takes YouTube video links more easily than any other blogging platform. (Of course... YT is a Google product). So there's that.
BUT good luck if you use ampersands in your content. > & < Typing some symbols is a total fail. (It translates the character into letters...) 'Nuff said there.
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I can cut and paste a draft, but then I can't control the alignment or line feed after that. It will not respond to right or center align markings and such. It won't respond to carriage returns.
And I just discovered there's a label limit... have to wonder if this limit is just a limit in blogger, or something to ponder in other blogging platforms and any impact it might have on the web?
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To reiterate... if you're a blogger who is either
- New to the world of blogging
- Has a very simple presentation format
- Crafts your content within your platform
- Isn't too demanding of the interface,
Then Blogger is a pretty awesome tool.
But as you graduate into a more technical blogger, well, it gets a bit tricky after that! I might even use the word annoying.
But on the bright side, Google makes it very easy to point domains to your blog and they have a ton of other features that can still make it fun for the newbie. It also, of late, has different options for your appearance of your blog. Though still, hands down, other platforms rule that aspect.
Me, I'm experimenting right now before I make the final decision to cut my losses with Blogger or keep going. Because for one thing... it's wonderful to not have to administer the server in the background. All you have to do is create and go on Blogger.
Sure, you're victim to what ever might happen to the Google servers, but it's rare when they have issues. Me, right now, on my HostGator shared server, (I love HG), I'm needing to spend time looking things over under the hood.
I'll let you know soon enough what comes of this experiment. For now, I'm working with it for an extended period of time. This site here, is my simpler, easy to post to site. So more than likely, I'm sticking it out. But I have a few other sites I get a bit more creative with. And there, is where my (in)sanity lies.
If you have any insights to the matter of using Blogger, by all means, chime in! I'd love to hear them, as I'm sure the readers would love to see them!
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