Why Google Blogger May Not Be The Easiest Blogging Platform To Use

Google Blogger is a free blogging platform wherein one can create a blog of their own. The web address of this blog will be YourWebSiteNameHere.blogspot.com unless you get your own domain but that's another article entirely as this one is about the free Google Blogger.

For some people, the free Blogger with the blogspot subdomain is more than enough and they don't need to purchase their own domain or at least not right away. But it is important to remember to be absolutely certain before deciding to purchase your own domain so you don't end up regretting things. It's also a good idea to first check out Blogger and see if you really like it. If you don't, you might choose to opt for Weebly or WordPress or some other platform instead.

As soon as you have your free account, you're ready to start making your very own blog. You can even make more than one blog.

You can add a favicon to your blog, change your blog's fonts (sizes, styles and type), and even easily monetize said blog through Google AdSense. These are just some of the many features of Blogger that can really make it a good choice for a blogging platform.

Furthermore, Blogger is said to be really easy and simple to use that even beginners shouldn't have a problem with it. Many have suggested that newbies make use of Blogger as their initial blogging platform in order to get started and learn more about blogging. With all that said, what could possibly be bad or wrong with this platform?

Once you have a Blogger account and once you're signed in to said account, you can start creating your blog right away. Click on the "Create a new blog" link and then input the title that you want for your blog. Decide on the blog address that you prefer.

After that, choose a theme that you want for your blog. Google Blogger does offer a few templates that you can freely use. Then click on the "create blog" button and you're done. All you need to do now is start filling up your blog unless you want to change your chosen theme.

You can also decide on the blog layout that you want such as opting for a left and right sidebar as opposed to just a sidebar or choosing to add 3 columns to your footer instead of just 2. After you finish fixing all of that, you can start adding your content. Once everything is to your liking, you can already change your blog settings so that it is visible to search engines and so it can be indexed.

Do you care what kind of template you choose for your blog or would you be one to just choose randomly or settle for the first theme that you see? Blogger offers some (read: rather few) free themes that you can choose from though these may not exactly be satisfactory to some people.

Thankfully, there are many, many more Blogger themes that you can find elsewhere and a whole lot of these templates are actually free to use as long as you leave the attribution links of said template in place. This is the way that you give credit to the designer and creator of the theme that you're using for free so it's only right to keep said links intact.

If you don't like these links though, some sites let you pay to be able to freely remove them or you can just buy premium, custom-made templates. Having many blog themes to choose from can be a good or bad thing, depending on which way you look at it.

But this can also be a bad thing because, with way too many choices, you might get overwhelmed and even frustrated especially if you feel like you've been looking for what seems like forever and yet you still can't find the template that you want.

The best-case scenario is finding the perfect theme that you want, which you like exactly how you see it and no longer wish to change in any way. But what if you can't find exactly what you're looking for? If this is the case, you do have some options.

Alternatively, you can just decided to make your own template, which is a perfectly fine idea if you actually know how to do this. Some may not be all that adept with coding, designing, tinkering with the HTML and CSS so this isn't an option for them.

Some may be able to find a free theme that works for them but which they would still like to further customize and modify. For example, they only like the general layout of the blog but they want to change the background image. Or maybe they would like to add floating social media icons on the right side of the template.

If you're the one who has to do all these customization and modification and you're not really adept at these things, then you'll have a hard time as this isn't exactly a walk in the park. Some changes are harder to do than others while some can actually be simple.

If you're new to all this, you'll really have to search around for information on how to accomplish the things that you want your blog to do. You'll also have to tinker with the HTML of your theme, which can be a rather daunting task as many things could go wrong. In this case, it's definitely a good idea to backup your template before editing anything or making any changes from it. Should anything go wrong, at least you have a backup.

Google Blogger has a layout page wherein you can arrange the way your blog looks. If you don't like how said blog looks, then you can easily rearrange it. All you need to do is simply drag and drop the gadgets or widgets into the location where you want them to be.

For example, you want to move the blog archive gadget from the left sidebar to the right sidebar, so, all you would have to do is drag said gadget into place. However, the layout page does have its limitations. For one, it follows your blog's theme. This means that if your blog only has a right sidebar and two footer columns, then you won't be able to drag any gadget from, say, the right sidebar to the non-existent left sidebar.

Furthermore, even if you follow your blog's theme and only try to rearrange things on where they can go, it's a fact that some things stay in place and you cannot move them elsewhere. This depends on what theme you're using. This page also allows you to edit the gadgets or widgets however this is rather limited. If you wish to do more, you would have to go to the HTML page of your template or even the CSS page.

The Blogger Template Designer allows you to easily modify and customize many aspects of your blog. You can choose to change your blog template or your blog's background image and you can even adjust widths and tinker with your blog's font colors and sizes.

However, depending on what theme you're using, some parts of this designer may or may not be applicable to said theme. If your theme isn't compatible with the Blogger Template Designer, you will get a message, which says "not applicable for this template".

Free themes that you find while searching around are usually the ones that are incompatible with the Template Designer. Sometimes, some aspects of the Template Designer will work with your chosen theme but other aspects will not be applicable.

It's very easy to create a blog post on Google Blogger. All you need to do is click on the appropriate button link and you'll be brought to the page where you can start writing your content.

You can easily input your post title and even tinker with the post settings such as adding labels or tags to your article. You can even edit the HTML of your post as well add links and images to said post, not to mention decide on the fonts.

Aside from text modules, you can easily add images, table of contents and even Amazon modules to monetize your article. On Blogger, if you want to add Amazon products to your post, you're going to have to work on this yourself.

You cannot add a poll gadget to your blog post by making use of the add a gadget feature of Blogger. You would have to search around for ways on how to do this, much like you would have to search around if you want to add more things to your blog post.

These are just some of the aspects and features of Google Blogger that don't exactly make it easy for some people to make use of. This is especially so for the beginners and those who aren't all that adept at tinkering with codes, HTML and CSS. But this is the case only for those that still want to further customize and modify their blog.

Those who don't care about such things and are perfectly satisfied with making use of a theme they'd found without needing to make any more changes would find Google Blogger to be a perfectly fine blogging platform.

Truly, Blogger is easy if you want things to be simple and don't really need to add any fancy stuff to your blog like floating social media icons or polls and maps in your blog posts. Of course, for those that are experts at HTML and CSS, they would have no trouble or problems with this at all.

Image Sources:

• The 'why Google Blogger may not be the easiest blogging platform to use' image above was modified by Ceres Schwarz, CC:BY-SA
• The original, unedited image is by Cpro, CC:BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
• All other images in this article are print screen by Ceres of the following:
• Part of the Wizzley add modules and other features boxes from the Wizzley account of Ceres
• The rest of the images are enlarged pics of the products from Amazon.com