I helped a friend set up a site on Blogger about a week ago for an arts related project she was doing. I suggested Blogger because I was under the impression that they'd improved a lot since my use of that platform up to a few years ago.
Man, was I ever wrong. There are so many things that just aren't working it's nuts. For example, I set the comments to require Captcha but allow anonymous commenting. The Captcha never appears and some choices of login don't even work and keep your comment from posting. The comment just disappears as if it was never in the system.
There are many other very basic things like that going wrong. My friend was trying to add live links via the dashboard. She had her first experience of searching the help forum for answers and found one, so that was a plus for her learning curve. But basically Blogger's dashboard solution didn't work and folks explained in the forum what you needed to do instead of what Blogger's software does.
When I went looking for answers to the oddities I was finding, I found lots of people on Blogger's help forum asking about the same things I was finding with no response from anybody at Blogger (owned by Google, the company that does not understand that good customer service eventually requires human intervention, f*cking robotic freaks!). I did see some incorrect answers from someone apparently trying to build his rep by helping others but that was also a FAIL.
So we're moving her blog to a different platform.
It's important to remember that all blogging platforms are going to disappoint. Nothing on the web ultimately fulfills the claims put forth and no matter how big and trusted the brand, they all eventually drop the ball in a dramatic manner, so it's tough to find a platform for blogging or any other tool that works right all the time.
That said, when serious problems immediately arise and it's clear that there is no real customer support, it's always better to cut and run than to stick around with false hope.
Feel free to suggest your favorite blogging platform in the comments. I'm using Typepad and they've gotten a lot better on all levels but, if I hadn't felt locked in once I got ProHipHop going, I would have moved it late in that first year. In fact, I probably should have anyway because they really screwed me over and it revealed serious problems within their company because the help I received was from someone not in the department responsible for those problems. She was just really nice but had to handle things in a manner that would allow that department to think they came up with the solution!
So, yeah, the web's a mess but sometimes things work and the best course of action is to focus on maximizing what works rather than obsessing over what doesn't.
Good luck out there!
I feel your pain pimp. I also started off with my blog on Blogger and was really displeased with it. I ended up moving over to WordPress and I haven’t had any technical problems with them so far. On the design side of things, if your not all that computer literate, like with HTML, then your kinda limited in designing your site to there templates; and ofcourse you will need a site host. But other than that, I’d say give them a try! Especially if your already unsatisfied with your current platform. Later!!!
I have positive impressions of the hosted version of WordPress though setting up the downloaded version for someone who just needs a simple blog is overkill, especially given the security issues that come with the plugins and so forth.
That said, I’ve worked a little with the hosted version and that might be the answer. I do html just fine but WordPress works with PHP and that complicates matters.
My friend went for the hosted version of WordPress. I think it’s actually a great platform in a number of ways based on another friend who’s been using it for awhile for multiple blogs.
Neither knows html or php and that hasn’t been a problem to date.