Blogging sites... Which do you use and why?

I've attempted blogging on a couple of different platforms including wordpress, blogspot, and blogger. If you are an experienced blogger - Which blogging platform do you prefer? and Why? Please be specific about what do you like and dislike -- something that doesn't work for you might be just the trick for someone else.

If there is already a thread or group on this topic - just let me know and I'll jump in there.

Thanks,
Dee.

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Permalink Reply by Denise H. Todd on December 18, 2010 at 10:12am

Thanks, Cassandra! I'm sure your tips will be helpful. So kind of you to offer.

Interesting that most people are saying that Blogger is simpler, but I'm getting from your post is that it's as simple as you make it -- and maybe some aren't really getting the SEO punch that they might want because they don't -- as you said ". . . learn some tricks and edit your html code to add meta-tags etc."

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Permalink Reply by Denise H. Todd on December 18, 2010 at 10:15am

How about pictures? Might be nice to share where some of you get your pictures for your blogs. Do most of you pay for them, or are you using "free" picture? or are you taking your own photos? Also wondering how much time you spend LOOKING for pictures.

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Permalink Reply by Carol Edith Wyer on December 18, 2010 at 10:31am

I only started blogging in September but blogspot works for me. I can't stand sites that take too long to load and they need to be simple to use. Definitely a must for an inexperienced blogger. I managed to put photos on my blog, posts, links and have worked out how to read the stats etc. You are welcome to see what you think. I'm a little scared to move it to Wordpress although I agree these blogs can look more professional.

Carol @ www.facing50withhumour.blogspot.com

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Permalink Reply by Cindee Snider Re on January 16, 2011 at 12:11pm

I can only speak of Wordpress, but can attest to its ease of use. A wide variety of templates and customization options are available, the tutorials and help section are accessible and easy to use, customer support response is timely, curteous, helpful, and effective. Photos load quickly and are easy to size, caption and position. I've only used my own work, so I can't speak to the question of time or expense involved in searching for them. My Wordpress site is: http://www.breathedeeply.org if you're interested in taking a look. I'd love to know what you think. Happy searching!! :)

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Permalink Reply by Bess Lovejoy on January 20, 2011 at 2:00am

I have used both, and I gave up on Blogger when I started seeing too many people using the same template I was using! I also encountered a lot of problems with pages simply not doing what they said they were going to -- previews not reflecting the final product once live -- and other issues that I could have fixed if I knew more HTML. I know almost no HTML, and I found WordPress very easy to use, and the results quite professional-looking (or at least I think so!). For comparison, here's the site I did (for a book-in-progress) in Blogger: http://afterlives.blogspot.com/ and in WordPress: http://afterlives.wordpress.com. Granted, I don't blog very much -- not nearly as much as I should!

One interesting wrinkle on this -- I get far, far more search engine hits on the Blogger site than WordPress. I sort of assumed this was because my Blogger site has been around longer, but I actually wonder if Google hasn't added some kind of automatic SEO functionality that my WordPress site isn't using. (Like I said, need to spend more time on my blog! But first I had a book proposal to write ;))