I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while but couldn’t quite find the words for it. There are several options when it comes to which platform you can use for your blog but I always suggest that bloggers use self-hosted WordPress. There are lots of benefits to using WordPress and I’m going to attempt to cover the main ones in this blog post.
Flexibility of Design
When I was on blogger, I felt the design options were fairly limited and that it was more difficult than it needed to be to make my blog stand out. When I moved to WordPress last year, I found the options for blog themes as well as what those themes can do increased. I also found that although I may be using a pipdig template (which I adore) and it may be the same as another blogger’s I can make that theme look like mine. I’ve also recently finished a mini redesign of my homepage and I’d love to know what you think.
Ownership
One of the many reasons I moved my blog away from Blogger was the fact that I didn’t technically own my blog. Google has full control over the Blogger platform and this made me feel uneasy as I didn’t want to lose my content. I now use the self-hosted version of WordPress which means I pay £3 a month for space on a server where my blog is hosted. You can then load any platform you wish but I prefer to use wordpress.org for mine. I know it sounds really technical but all it means is your blog is then yours not Google’s and is stored on a server that you have full access to. It also backs up regularly so if you encounter an issue it can be restored to a previous point in time.From my experience (I once deleted my blog by accident) hosting companies are really helpful and their support teams will help you as much as they can.
SEO Benefits
There’s a whole host of SEO benefits to having your blog on WordPress but the main one of these is being able to utilise the Yoast plugin. I love this plugin and if you want my full list of SEO tips for your blog then check out my post about how to fully optimise your site for SEO.
Plugins
I quickly touched on this above but plugins within WordPress make life so much easier. From the implementation of SEO using Yoast to reposting evergreen content to my Twitter feed using Revive Old Post – there really is a plugin for every occasion. Essentially plugins eliminate the need for large amounts of coding as well as the possibility that something could go wrong. I’ve already posted about my favourite WordPress plugins but I feel an updated one may be coming soon.
If you’ve read this post and decided that a move to WordPress is what you want to do but you wouldn’t have a clue where to start, check out my blog services page and find out how I can help you make the move.
