I've recently migrated from my blog on Blogger to this one here. That set me thinking about the difference between the two, or what I've lost and what I've gained. So here goes...
What I've Lost:
- My cool URL. I prefer http://rikoe.blogspot.com over http://www.geekswithblogs.net/rikoe. Of course this is a site issue, and not a .Text one as such, but still. On Blogger I could dream up any number of catchy URLs for as many blogs as I liked!
- Configurable themes. This is not a biggie, but on Blogger there really were some beautiful theme templates that were configurable to my heart's content. Here there are only a few themes that I can select from, and while they're nice too, I can't play around that much.
- My user profile (with photo). I liked the nice user profile that Blogger puts in all my blogs. I'm sure there's some trick to accomplish the same thing with .Text, but it just doesn't feel the same.
- Posting in my own time zone - this is a big one! If I post at 10 AM in South Africa then I wouldn't like my post to say 12 PM when it's published. I did configure my time zone in .Text, but my first blog didn't post with the correct time. Maybe it was a once-off thing. But I'll struggle to make peace with this one if it's true!
- Design mode in any browser I choose, for compiling my posts. Blogger's post fromatter works in Firefox, .Text doesn't. That sucks.
- Saving a draft of my post for later completion. I only have “Post“ and “Cancel“ options now.
- Preview mode. I could look at my posts as they would be before publishing them.
What I've Gained:
- Categories. The big reason I switched. Couldn't live without 'em, glad I have 'em. I like the “Edit Categories“ interface I get.
- Keywords. This is also very cool. The ability to turn certain words into links automatically? Bring it on!
- Stats. Very nice. It sucked quite a bit that Blogger couldn't show me stats about my blog. The only thing I could do was add a custom hit counter. Now, not only do I have statistics, but I also have trackbacks to see who referenced my blog!
- Articles. I'm not exactly sure what the usefulness of this is yet, or the exact difference between posts and articles.
- Galleries. I can't see myself using this very often, but hey, it's another feature.
- Configurable Links. I like the way .Text works with “Link categories“ - I can group my links quite easily and it incorporates well into the overall interface. With Blogger, I had to go and edit my template to accomplish this.
- Post Design View. Apart from it not working in Firefox, the design mode of .Text is a lot better than Blogger's equivalent. Blogger did have a “blockquote“ button though...
- A certain something... that I can't quite define. I just like the overall feel of it, both the blog and admin mode.
- Speed - last but certainly not least, this site is a lot faster than Blogger!
So all in all, migrating to .Text has made my life a whole lot easier (apart from one or two detractors). It's interesting to see that .Text has now become Community Server::Blogs - I wonder what will happen with it now? Will it become a commercial product and how will it affect sites like this one? We'll just have to wait and see...