derivative

Long time no post.   I’m again weighing the options between WordPress (either WP.com or WP.org) and Blogspot.  In short, WP offers superior blogging capabilities. Its editor is fast and reliable.  Whereas Blogspot’s editor simply can’t be trusted with its markup, any issues WP once had on its WYSIWYG side were resolved long ago,   Wordpress offers more space for image-uploads, and handles them better than Blogspot can, as well.  Wordpress has excellent spam protection; Blogspot has none.  In short, I feel like WP is a “professional” blogging service, whereas Blogspot can best be described as the AOL of blogging services.  Blogger may be everywhere, but it is known more for its warts than for its beauty marks.

The one thing BlogSpot does offer, though, is integrated Javascript in its badges.  For a number of valid reasons, all related to security and privacy, WP.com does not allow its users to add JS to their posts, pages, or widgets.  On the one hand, one can make due with this limitation: the ability to write eloquently does not require JS patches to other Websites.  However, most of the interactive, colourful fun that has popularized blogs - all those widgets that display the writer’s recent photos or songs listened to or places visited - all require JS to operate.  This means no Twitter on Wordpress.com blogs.  No Last.fm.  No Librarything.  No Nike+ badges, etc.

For anyone keeping up with me and my thoughts through a feedreader, this is a dilemma of little consequence.  For anyone coming across the site content through a google search, however, things a little different. Those colorful and regularly updated widgets make a world of difference not only in content and design, but in reader retention.

Thinking about this subject is in many ways an exercise in self-indulgence, but it remains an important and interesting subject to me.  I’ve been, and remain interested in the manner in which we relate to others and ourselves on the internet, so blogging tech and blogging advances is important to me.  For this reason, I’m going to start copying some of my content into a blogspot account (Don’t worry RSS types: you won’t be doubled up on mitch-content) and track its progress.  I’d hate to give up on WP’s blog editor, especially for Blogger’s archaic system, but until WP.com begins to develop more in-house work-arounds to the JS issue, I think I’ll have to go back to Blogger.

Meta Meta Meta.

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