Monday, March 12, 2007

Considering a Change

I've been considering a change over to Wordpress. In fact, I've moved everything over there to philwilson.wordpress.com. One reason was comments. I've heard from quite a few people (not directly to me) that not everyone wants to have a Google account or sign in here to make comments. I've also heard pretty good things overall about it as blogging software. I was pretty happy with the import process. It imported all of my pics over there, which I had heard it didn't do. It didn't import the YouTube stuff over, but I don't have nearly as much of those, so it didn't bother me incredibly.

However, as I've started to work with it some, I've run into some things that Blogger seems to do better.
  • Formatting of pictures in Wordpress is really awful. I've tried and tried and tried to do "captions" to pictures below them, as I do here on Blogger and it's just plain bad in Wordpress. And I've found no way to fix it.
  • I'm not happy with what you can in the sidebar in Wordpress. I love in Blogger that can have multiple link categories, which you can also do in Wordpress, but the process seems more complex in Wordpress than in Blogger. Also, Wordpress doesn't really allow me move the link categories around. Well, maybe it does, but I've not really been able to figure it out. Also, Wordpress doesn't really allow me enter my Statcounter code very cleanly into it.
So, anyway, I think I could get around the link stuff, but the picture formatting is really what's holding me back. If you use Wordpress, have you found a way around it? And do you have a preference between Wordpress and Blogger? I'm really curious about people's thoughts before I make the complete jump.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

webbleyou, my man.

webbleyou.

Jennifer Thompson said...

webbleyou.com

Justin Baeder's Wordpress hosting service. It's $4/month. Justin and I went to college together. He's doing maintenance on the site right now - not sure how long it'll be down. His contact info is here, though.

Karen said...

I have a WordPress blog that I rarely use and find the picture thing to be frustrating as well. But I imagine I will wind up switching eventually. Some of the layouts are better in WP than Blogger.

Oh, and Webbleyou is the hosting company that Mike Cope uses.

Phil said...

So what benefit does Webbleyou give me for $4bucks a month? And Jennifer could you get him to hook me up without the cost because of your prior association? ;-)

Jennifer Thompson said...

Ha. Well, we haven't really spoken except via blog comments since graduation, so I doubt that qualifies for a friends & family discount! He and his wife are both teachers, so you could think of it as helping out someone in your former profession...

gavin richardson said...

go typepad phil!.. &:~)

does the wordpress not have a code editor within the rich text editor? i would guess that is one way you can insert captions onto your pictures.

mundiejc said...

The pictures have driven me nuts on wordpress too. They make it hard to do some of that stuff cause they don't want people to do malicious things (at least that's what I understand).

Also, wordpress has forums where people answer questions.. you could check that out.

And I like wordpress better because its all ready got many of your statcounter stats built in to the site. Its not quite as proficient, but its all right there and easily accessible

And you don't have to type in annoying codes three times to post

Malia said...

I think what they are getting at with webbleyou is that you would have a blog that is powered by wordpress.org, not a blog on wordpress.com that way you have more creative control over your content. My guess would be that the more content you have the greater the cost. But come on, can't you pony up $4? ;)

I think one reason it's harder to do picture stuff with WP, is because they really want you to upgrade to their pro account that allows you to alter your CSS code.

I've heard that the stats that WP provides are really good, but I've never actually seen them to know if they offer the same sorts of things we're used to seeing on StatCounter.

Phil said...

I don't like their stats compared to Statcounter.

Clarissa said...

Justin, you just, you just make me so mad. I just can't believe you would say something like that. You need to learn how to be nice. I mean, how could you POSSIBLY find the codes annoying? You need to consider the feelings of Google. Honestly. You are so contentious.

:-)

Nuthin' but luv fer ya ... miss you. Yeah, you too, Phil, sometimes. Hi, Karen! Tell your sister she'd better email me!

Anonymous said...

Phil, I use statcounter on my wordpress, webbleyou hosted blog and have no problems

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