Wordpress? Looking to expand my audience outside of the poker community. In addition to writing about poker, casinos, road tripping, nightclubs, sex, drugs, alcohol, and gambling degenerates... I enjoy writing about music, politics, social issues, and movies. Thanks.
That's the name I heard the most while on the road the last sixty days. Was just making sure. About to go check out the site right now.
I'll be the first to break the mold and say I wasn't too impressed with Wordpress. I'm hosted on Blogger and for a simple $10 a year I picked up my own domain name for my blog. I find it really easy to edit and if you have knowledge of html coding you can create it just about any way you want. The link to my page is in my signature.
I used blogger for a while and it was easy and served my purpose well (I was a casual blogger, like once or twice a week). I think if you are blogging casually then either would work just fine.
I have my own domains on WP and Blogger, and I actually moved one of the blogs to WP because I wanted to offer purchase downloads on my art, so that photoblog isn't interactive in terms of comments much. Blogger I find more friendly for day-to-day blogging, also it's loads cheaper to host own domains through GoDaddy (£10 or less per year) than BlueHost (about £100, and it's the one you need on WP). But if your don't need own domain, both are free so maybe you should open free blogs on both and see which one you like better.
You can also use Godaddy to register you domain and then get Wordpress to map it for you (for an additional 13$ a year). You can buy some domain names straight from Wordpress (18-25$ a year) it depends on the domain name. I use wordpress, found I got more traffic than Blogger.
Been pretty happy with Wordpress, though T and I will probably get a domain at some point too. At this point, though, the free site is suitable for our ramblings and rants and reports.
[MENTION=50819]BritInFrance[/MENTION]: Cool, thanks for the information! I am not very good with IT and am generally terrified of CPanels so BlueHost has been an experience
I have a base Wordpress site (didn't buy the domain) and it's served my purposes just fine. However, as some posters pointed out above, you'll be limited in terms of customization if you go with the free platform. You can check out my site for reference, if you like (see signature).
I like Wordpress. I've got my own domain and installed Wordpress on it rather than take the free option, mostly for the flexibility. With your own Wordpress install there's a lot more things you can do with the site, and it doesn't matter what host you use. That said, if you're after building an audience more than getting the best user experience, the platform is going to make a marginal difference, if any. Traffic comes from advertising.
I've used WordPress for over 3 years, which is how long I've had the domain it's installed on. I can definitely say WordPress is my favorite, and I've used a lot of blogging platforms. What's already been said is true: Wordpress.com doesn't provide a lot of flexibility when it comes to customizing your blog, but if you're just looking for someplace to write and spit out what you have to say, it really shouldn't matter. Points for WordPress indeed. There's also LiveJournal, which I don't think anyone has mentioned. You can route your LiveJournal to your domain I think, and LJ is incredibly easy to use. I like it second to WP.
How do you go about promoting your blog/writing? Are their sites you can submit blogs and literary work to for people to check out? I have a following in the poker world, but outside of that...I've never tried to acquire more followers.
Wordpress is a far better platform for blogging than Blogger, in my humble opinion. If you are looking for interaction with your readers Blogger has too many bouncers on the door. All my blogging buddies use Wordpress. I speak from experience and have been blogging and interacting with other bloggers across the web for years. LB
One way is to participate in write-ins, which are popping up on Wordpress more and more. In a lot of ways, Wordpress is like Twitter--hit the Reader page, explore other blogs, comment when you feel moved to do so, engage and follow the work/writers you like. Eventually, people do the same to you if you are producing quality content. There are. It depends on what kind of writing you want to submit. Passages North does an "Writers on Writing" series. This is just one example.
