Blogger is a wonderful free blogging platform, maybe the best one of the freebies out there, but it is still trailing from other, mostly when it’s faced against those which can be installed on propietary servers. In this case we’re talking about WordPress, which is the reference CMS that comes to mind when we can have access to a server.
Pitting it against WordPress.com doesn’t have much sense because its free version limitations leave it far behind Blogger.com. We also need to say that the fact we have WordPress on a proprietary server gives it a lot of space ahead Google’s service, however I think that most of the things Blogger does not have (yet?) can be implemented with a little more effort on the developer’s team.
The features and functionalities I think Blogger needs to have to be like WordPress are:
1. File hosting.
As we speak, CSS and Javascript need to be placed into the template itself which makes the loading process a bit slow, or hosted on a third-party service, which most of the time have a bandwith limit.
2. Developer Community
Even though it is one of the most used blogging platforms in the world, Blogger lacks a developer community around it, the few improvements come from the official developer team and this makes a much slower evolution compared to WordPress.
3. Efficient Valid Code.
I’ve said this a lot of times before, Blogger’s code is very inefficient. I can understand that it is a lot stronger because of the template system they use, but a lot of their elements are loaded in some not-so-useful or plain useless code and validating it is a nearly impossible task.
4. Categories and labels.
Blogger’s current label system only uses one-level tags, which means, sub-tags cannot be created to at least simulate WordPress’ sub-categories. Having more than one classification method comes really handy as the blog grows, as for the user as for the blogger.
5. Comment moderation.
It is true that Blogger made a great step ahead by adding the comment-form to the post page, by this time it doesn’t always work as it should. Comment management is completely manual, so you need to visit every post with new comments in order to read and reply. Also, there isn’t access to some of the commenter’s information like e-mail and IP address. And going a bit further, support to external services like gravatar.
6. Pages.
In WordPress it is clear the differences to the uses of "Pages" and "Posts", the posts are the daily news, dynamic and the pages are for static contents like "About…", Contact, Advertising, Privacy policy, etc. These are exactly the kind of pages that do not exist on Blogger, we have to make a post with an old date or look for help on an external service.
7. Custom fields.
Even though it is not so common on WordPress, these are magnificent tools to power a blog and it is missing on Blogger. With these you can create some more complex stuff quicker, a showcase or a "Read More" or a summary with examples.
8. Documentation.
In the counterpart of WordPress, Blogger’s documentation is poor and rarely updated, added the fact the user community doesn’t produce too much information, it is logical the difficulty which represents this platform to someone who has quite some time using it and wants to customize it.
9. Image Management.
Gallery creation, image administration from the Blogger’s control panel (right now only available by Picasa), multiupload and an improved image uploader.
10. Trackbacks.
Theoretically, Blogger has built in a trackbacks system, but is nearly impossible to trackback a blog made on Blogger.
Conclusions
These 10 features are in my opinion the ones with the highest priority to be included on Blogger so they can be closer to WordPress, but there are many other details in which WordPress claims the lead, we have to admit Blogger has some great things over WordPress, a few, but there.
What is striking is that these 10 points are really very basic things, any actual WordPress user thinks of this as a problem from the past, but it is exactly what’s in front of Blogger users.
What do you readers think? Can Blogger catch up on the other platforms? Why do you think Blogger is getting left far behind considering the other Google services?