Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Back in 2018 I shifted The Portly Politico from the old Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com, and I’ve never looked back—until now.

I’ve dedicated the last two Wednesdays to highlight some of WordPress.com‘s functionality; you can read those posts here and here (for those of you that read last week’s post, I’m happy to report that I was able to deactivate the “Classic Editor” plugin with no ill effects—everything converted back to the blocks editor seamlessly). I thought it might be interested to go back and remind myself why I made the leap to WordPress.com, and to see if maybe I was too hasty in making the change.

I decided to compare Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com in three areas: overall interface (looking at the home screen, for example, when you first log into your account); the posting interface/editor; and the final published content (what the blogs look like when published).

Note that I have the free Blogger/Blogspot account that anyone with a Gmail e-mail address can get, while with WordPress.com I have the Premium plan, which is $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise). Blogger/Blogspot does not have any inherently paid options, but lacks the ability to purchase a domain name from Blogger/Google directly. You can purchase a domain name from a number of third-party providers (that’s my approach with www.tjcookmusic.com, which I built using Google Sites), but it’s not integrated into Blogger/Blogspot the way domain name purchases are in WordPress.com.

Regardless, the basic functionality of posting, checking analytics, etc., is analogous enough between Blogger/Blogspot and WordPress.com to make fruitful comparisons.

Read More »

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Last week I wrote about adapting to blocks in WordPress.com, as well as looking at some other changes WordPress.com has introduced recently, like badges and/or achievements for reaching certain milestones.  My overall verdict was that, while I miss the Classic Editor, blocks do offer a degree of versatility that make editing easier, even if there are some shortcomings to them.

While writing and researching that post, I noticed that there is a plugin native to WordPress.com that restores the Classic Editor—indeed, an almost even more “classic” version of it than I realized!—and realized that I had to give it a whirl.  Could it be that WordPress.com still had the coveted feature that many bloggers still crave?  And how would it stack up to the new block editing regime?

Everything you’re about to read is possible in any of the paid WordPress.com plans, including the Personal plan, which is $4 a month when paid annually (or $9 a month otherwise).  I use the Premium plan, which $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise).  I’m not sure if the Classic Editor plugin can be re-enabled in free plans; that said, if you use a free plan and it works, let me know!

Read More »