Why I Chose Blogger as My Blogging Platform

I'm not new to blogs or blogging. I've used WordPress for 15 years, managing my own servers and servers for clients and friends. But I wanted to focus on writing for a change. Actually writing. Getting my thoughts out of my head and onto... Something. Onto a blog.

I was looking for something simple that didn't get in my way and that didn't need maintenance. That was inexpensive. And that had an easy to jump into mobile app for writing. I prefer to use a laptop for productivity, but I'm more inclined to write on my phone.

I looked at a lot of options in no particular order:

• WordPress
• Ghost
• Blogger
• Medium
• Substack
• Fika

The primary reasons I chose Blogger were the cost (you can't beat free) and the simplicity of managing the website. To create a website on Blogger, all you need is a free Google account. When you visit the Blogger website and login with your Google account you are able to create as many websites as you want for free. The first step is to pick a name for the blog and then pick a domain name. Initially, you will create a "name.blogspot.com" domain. But once the site is setup, can go into the settings and set a domain that you own as the domain name for your website.

What about the cons? The biggest one is you can't self-host a Blogger site. You are stuck on the platform. If the platform goes away, so does your site. Google is not afraid to kill their products. They have a track record of doing so. However, Blogger has been around since 1999 and owned by Google since 2003. Hopefully that means it will be here for years to come.

So what if Google shuts down Blogger? Fortunately, they make it easy to download your website data. There is a "Back up content" button in the Blogger settings for your website. Clicking this downloads all of your blog content to an XML file on your computer which you can then use to migrate your website to an alternative solution such as a self-hosted WordPress website. This gives us a contingency plan in case we ever need it.

There you have it! Blogger is free, easy to use, has a great mobile app experience for writing that removes barriers (for the way I work, at least) and gives us an exit strategy if we ever need to use it. Are you using Blogger to host your website or blog? If not, what platform are you using and why?