In a word: control.

All web developers like control. We also hate slow clunky apps.

Since their upgrade to beta, Blogger has become even more CMS-y. With form fields to add every individual link, WYSIWYG editors, I upgraded twice and reverted twice.

Also I noticed that some widgets just don't work in Blogger. My ZoomCloud for some reason didn't work after I pasted the code.

The load time itself is slow. When running on my slow broadband connection, Blogdrive admin still revs up quick but the admin on Blogger takes forever, and sometimes even hangs.

The most annoying thing is the sign in. Since I stupidly "upgraded" to Beta, I'm forced to login using my Gmail account. If my Five Cats Blog hadn't been around for so long, I'd move it to Blogdrive too.

With Blogdrive, there's a lot of manual control. You can write your HTML anywhere and save your template if you wish to change it. Placing code in the Profile and Side sections means when you change templates, your links et all won't be lost. Excellent portability.

The only critical shortcoming I find with Blogdrive is the lack of categories and tags within your blog itself. Third-party apps like ZoomClouds can only go so far. I still have my fingers crossed that they'll add this feature in the future.

So here's the quick on the good:

Blogdrive: lots of manual control with the codes which means widgets all work, fast admin interface, in-built comments, ability to delete comments, permalinks, image gallery, and contact form.

Blogger: lots of skins, good support, categories, tags, excellent uptime, archiving logical name convention.

Here's the bad:

Blogdrive: no categories, no tags, sometimes site goes down without warning, poor archiving name convention.

Blogger: slow admin, unable to delete comments, poor portability of template (from old to beta - we lose the links), less control over template after new system in place.

Here's another review.

Tags: Tags: Blogdrive, Blogger, blog, Blogger vs Blogdrive, cool apps,