A few days ago, AnakBrunei announced that he was contemplating relocating to WordPress, from Blogger, which is his current blogging platform. It elicited a number of comments, which mostly went “why would you want to relocate?”, or “what’s wrong with Blogger?” and etc.

It reminded me of the good old days when I used to blog at Blogger. It is a simple platform, feature-rich, and most importantly, the interface was idiot-proof and very easy to use. It was ideal for me who at that time, was a freshie blogger and new to the blogging world. I didn’t need too much, aside from the Rich Text Editor, and the publish button.

Adding to that, I also had absolutely no knowledge of HTML, CSS, or whatever, however, Blogger has an extensive number of help tutorials which is made available by a simple Google search. These tutorials were mostly made by seasoned bloggers, who are about 13-15 years of age, so most of them are easy and straightforward. They were very helpful, and aided me in customising my “skin”, adding in things like links for my blogroll, extras like a tagboard, a statistics counter (which I continue to be obsessed with well into my WP days), and various badges. Tina, Pynk, and Naz, who are one of my first readers (and probably make up my entire readership at the time) might remember (or not) phases where I change my blogskin almost every week.

I was actually quite content with Blogger, but one day, I was feeling adventurous and the temptation to move to WP was exceptionally strong! So I caved and without any knowledge of what WP has to offer, I suddenly find myself importing posts from Blogger! Until now I still don’t really know why I suddenly decided to move.

The move was swift, and I completed importing my Blogger posts in under an hour, with one try. However, after a week of using WP, I actually started to regret it! Sometimes I even contemplated moving back to Blogger but it just felt wrong: like going back with an ex-boyfriend (I don’t do granola). I missed the freedom of having to be able to tweak my “skins” which are actually called “themes” in WP. I missed my tagboard, and I wasn’t used to the stats counter.

However, after a while, I started to appreciate the perks of using WP. It is definitely faster with regards to posting, whether with or without pictures.  I definitely like WP’s dashboard better.

While now I’m more familiar with HTML and CSS than when I first started blogging, in order to operate WP, I actually need NO knowledge of such acronyms whatsoever. Yes there are also hundreds of WP tutorials (and forums as well) nowadays but when that fails, the actual makers of WP are at your hand and foot, contactable via a button on the WP dashboard, promising a swift personalised response.

I realised after a while that my blog as a whole, is definitely cleaner, more stable, more professional looking, and loads faster, both on the computer and on the phone. I love that WP is a constantly evolving platform, and more new features are added every other week. In hindsight, I thought Blogger lacked that evolving element towards it, and I was actually just bored with Blogger’s “finality”.

As a reader, I like WP’s commenting system better, i.e, the auto-save thing for your name, e-mail address and URL. Nowadays I just find commenting on Blogger plain annoying (too many unnecessary steps). I definitely have less spam attacking me from all sides despite no “word verification”.

I’m not very tech savvy and might be considered by many a n00b of sorts but, when I read AnakBrunei’s post, I felt like, why wouldn’t you want to relocate? I always thought that blogs using WP always mean business. Like Blogger is Hua Ho Delima, and WP is Hua Ho Manggis. Hua Ho Manggis means business. It is a matter of luxury and having more things around you to work with. So if any of you are contemplating a move, I strongly recommend  the WP platform.