Review: Blogger
Website: Blogger.com
Owned by: Google
Uses LiveJournal codebase: no
Number of accounts: unknown at time review was written
Features
Pros
Cons
Ads
Blogger does not enforce ads in any way. However, they do allow their users to use AdSense accounts to insert Google ads into their templates (example). Other ad services may be used as well (example).
Ease of transferring an LJ journal to Blogger
Unless you are able to find a third-party program that will transfer them, you are limited top copying, pasting, and publishing the entries yourself.
Overall
Blogger is fairly easy to use. It should be considered if you want to publish a blog to your website but available platforms/services confuse you or turn you off due to cost, or if you already keep your LJ public.
Additonal Info
In order to publish to your own website, you will need passive FTP or SFTP; active FTP will not work.
Owned by: Google
Uses LiveJournal codebase: no
Number of accounts: unknown at time review was written
Features
- Allows publishing to a subdomain at blogspot.com or to your own website.
- Commenting can be enabled and disabled on a post-by-post basis. Comments can be moderated (requires a verification code) to prevent spam and can be deleted individually.
- Group Blogs can be created, allowing multiple users to post in the same blog.
- You can create a Blogger Profile and view other people's profiles.
- Blogger offers photo hosting for posting pictures within your blog.
- You can post photos and text directly from your cell phone by sending them to go@blogger.com. When you gain access to a computer, you can claim the post and transfer it to your own blog.
- Blogger offers its own phonepost feature, called AudioBlogger, which uses mp3 files.
- You can post via email.
- All blogs have their own Atom feed which can be syndicated at other websites, including LJ.
Pros
- Blogger does not offer free/paid accounts. All accounts are free and all are given the same features.
- You can post to username.blogspot.com or to a location on your own website.
- Blogger has edutorials, advice, and how-tos, including how not to get fired due to your blog, how to date and blog, and how to blog your novel.
- Blogs and accounts are independent of each other, meaning you can have multiple blogs under one account (versus a new username for each one and logging in & out to jump between journals) and you can transfer blogs to other accounts.
- Blogger has no ads feature. However, users are allowed to create Google AdSense accounts and integrate Google ads into their journal layouts.
Cons
- No "friends lists".
- No communities.
- Entries are posted publicly.
- No icons.
- Layout customizations (template editing) are done like webpage editing. For people who are used to S1 overrides or the S2 wizard interface, this may be confusing.
Ads
Blogger does not enforce ads in any way. However, they do allow their users to use AdSense accounts to insert Google ads into their templates (example). Other ad services may be used as well (example).
Ease of transferring an LJ journal to Blogger
Unless you are able to find a third-party program that will transfer them, you are limited top copying, pasting, and publishing the entries yourself.
Overall
Blogger is fairly easy to use. It should be considered if you want to publish a blog to your website but available platforms/services confuse you or turn you off due to cost, or if you already keep your LJ public.
Additonal Info
In order to publish to your own website, you will need passive FTP or SFTP; active FTP will not work.