Negatory, Good Buddy: Things Wordpress Won't Do and Some That It Does Better

Exploring Wordpress.com and comparing it to the wonders of Blogger has been added to my way lengthy list of current geekoid interests. I have been using Blogger for about 3 years and the full version of Wordpress on a paid host for 9 months. I just started messing with Wordpress.com and am learning the limitations of the free version as well as how it differs from Blogger.

I really like the fact that Blogger is pretty user-friendly and free-and-easy with the Javascript widgets. Wordpress.com is also user-friendly and has some awesome features like built-in stats but sadly it is not welcoming of widgets from other sources and Javascript widgets are strictly verboten (click here for more on that and again here for a bit more). This means that some of my all-time favorite, most visually interesting, widgets don't work on Wordpress.com's blogging platform with free hosting.

In the immortal words of Jeri Blank, "Sad."

A Few of My Favorite
Widgets Which Won't Work in Wordpress.com
(Sorry, I could not resist the urge to alliterate. It's an English Major thing.)

*Library Thing Book Covers
*Twitter Badge
*Del.icio.us Tag Clouds
*Photobucket Slide
*Project Playlist Player

Methinks Wordpress may be too serious for some of my intended audience (families with young children and teens who are more likely to respond to an eye-catching visual like a slide of movie posters than a lot of words describing the actual movie).

Wordpress.org, the platform, will let you do anything you want because you are paying to host it yourself. If you crash, get hacked, whatever, it's on you. The dotcom free hosting site is another deal entirely; a very safe, secure place to engage in serious blogging.

I do love the tabs, on Wordpress.com, though. I can see some real use for that - more static info, like library location and hours, program and event schedules, on the tabbed pages and reviews on the front page (where the blog is) sorted by categories and tags.

The categories and tags feature of Wordpress appear to offer an especially efficient way to organize and sort posts. I plan to continue to work with Wordpress to increase my proficiency with these and other features. The Trek continues.....

Happy Trails!