Earlier tonight I had the pleasure of sitting in on Emily Grosvenor’s class on Beginning Blogging. Emily is a talented writer who runs a great blog at Desperately Seeking Salem, so I knew she would do a bang up job guiding others into the rewarding and frustrating world of blogging.
A point that often comes up with people just getting into blogging is to start off with a free blog at WordPress.com or Blogger and later moving up to your own self-hosted platform. I think that is great advice, and I have no problem with it whatsoever. But I do express a little concern at what I heard someone else mention at the meeting, and that is to start off with a free blog at Blogger to get your feet wet, and then later move on to hosting your own blog with WordPress.
Let me give you a little background as to why I’m opposed to switching horses in midstream like this. I have been known to migrate blogs from time to time. I’ve moved blogs from one domain to another, and I’ve also moved blogs from one type of blogging platform to another. While this is in no way an impossible task, I seriously recommend starting off with WordPress.com if you plan on self hosting with WordPress at a later date for two reasons.
First, if you learn the ropes of blogging with a free blog on WordPress.com you are going to handle the transition to self-hosted WordPress blogging much, much easier. You will already be familiar with the admin backend, how the posting procedures work, and how to navigate and control the settings of your blog.
If you were to start your blogging adventure with Blogger and then move over to WordPress, you will probably be lost and confused for a time while trying to learn a new blogging platform. It doesn’t make sense to train yourself on one piece of software if you are planning on using a different one later down the road.
Secondly, blog migrations have many crucial aspects that have to be followed carefully in order to be successful. WordPress and Blogger use different permalink structures, and while you can modify the WordPress format to use the permalink style that Blogger does, I think it is easier and safer to stick with the WordPress way.
You could just leave your old blog and start fresh when you decide to self-host, but why leave all your hard work behind? It doesn’t take a whole lot to bring your old content into your new blog and redirect your free blog to your shiny new one. And by migrating your blog and redirecting your old one you will retain the audience that you have built up so far.
My advice to new bloggers? Check out a Blogger or WordPress.com and see which one you like more. And when you do decide to take total control of your blog, stick with the same blogging software you started with.
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