After Google Blogger 10th anniversary.. Google Blogger promises that many of our dreams as Bloggers will come true so soon.. by dreams I mean "Product Ideas for Blogger" which Google has launched on last April to collect users votes & feature requests on blogger.
Google Blogger actually has started by offering a Tag-Cloud widget..
I've already made a Tag-Cloud widget to address the issue but a native solution from blogger will certainly be better :(
You should know that.. don't even think of skipping the following part :)
In August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format.- In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google. The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free.
- On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest redesign version in beta. In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta.
In 2006 Google introduced Page Creator. As of August 2008, Google pages had over 3 million users.- In September 2008, Google announced that it would not accept new sign-ups to Page Creator, instead encouraging users to use Google Sites.
Google Sites was launched on February 2008. based on the wiki-like software "JotSpot" that was acquired by Google on October 2006!- As of May 21, 2008, Google Sites became available for free separately from Google Apps, and without the need for a domain.
What I'm trying to say..
Google Blogger was a very successful acquisition. Google Blogger is the best free blogging platform out there.. I love it.. so please focus on developing it!
A Major advantage of Google Page Creator was the free 100MB file hosting. and that is high feature request on "Product Ideas for Blogger" to allow users to upload Javascript and CSS to their blogs.. Google already offers 1GB of free image hosting on Picasa! so how hard it gonna be?
Another advantage of Page creator is creating pages :) People also requested that to be added to blogger..
After responding to this 2 particular wishes, It would be easy for Google Blogger to completely replace Page creator.. also Google sites will not offer any extra features! Google sites will have no place in the picture.. Period
I've been thinking about this for a while.. and blogging about it gives me a relief what about you? what do you think?
Web developer, jQuery plugin author, social media fan and Technology Blogger.
Blogger is better than Wordpress.com? Not so sure. Wordpress.com has a vibrant, open-source community backing it up and developing new features even for the free version. Blogger is good, but what's behind it is the hidden, mysterious Corporate Google.
@Mathew What's behind Blogger is The SUPER POWER free hosting and free domain and google logo but ofcourse wordpress is much more powerfull .but personally i use Joomla! My Lovely Expandable CMS
@Matthew,
I mean Blogger as a free blogging platform is much customizable and powerful than the free Wordperss.com
Of course, hosting the free wordpress is the ultimate blogging platform but a good hosting is not free!
I agree that Wordpress as an open-source software provides users with new features and updates regularly as opposed to slow Blogger development ):
I hope that Google will make Blogger open-source someday..
@Pete,
Joomla is very strong CMS, but as a blog I don't think so.. yet! Also you need to pay for the hosting.
I'd love to see a better integration between Sites and Blogger. I see pulling in posts as announcements in Sites, essentially using Blogger as a feed generator.
Then the rest of sites could be used to add content that is much more difficult to add to blogger such as multimedia, iGoogle gadgets, Google Docs, Downloads, Announcements and Discussions, etc.
Just thinking out loud here.
@Kristian,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts..
I just took a 2nd look on Google Sites and I still see that it is very limited with customization, while in Blogger you can style your blog and embed HTML/CSS/Javascript code as you like.
I agree that Google Sites is making it very easy to embed Google docs,photos,.. but most of these widgets are available in Blogger too. And if not you can copy widgets code from anywhere and paste it in HTML/Javascript Blogger widget..
@Mike,
You know, I was going to mention that exactly. Google Sites customization is very limited compared to Blogger.
The problem with dropping widgets in Blogger is the limited amount of real estate you have. With Google Sites, you can create pages and drop widgets in appropriate context-related locations.
@Kristian,
I think pages is the only advantage of Google Sites.. It would be much better if they add it to Blogger and phase-out Google Sites :)
what about drupal?
Blogger as a free blogging is far more easy to use and settings can be changed easily. Word press am not sure of that.