to Blogger or wordpress it, that is the . . .

Today, after much searching and reading and getting help from the feedburner forum, I found out what I've suspected all along. As Robert Heinlein pointed out in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, TANSTAAFL. The folks at wordpress do offer the commenting funtionality in a flare but it comes through their paid service at version 1.x or 2.x so this great adventure has now taken another fast curve. Yesterday, I said I'd write more about the differences and similarities of these two blog hosts. So here's a brief list. At blogger, you sign up and get your first template within three clicks. At wordpress, your template is called a theme and when you sign up they assign a default one until you've had a chance to pick a theme. They are real big on themes over there. At blogger, if you need things explained you can go to help and choose the forum or the help center/FAQ but there is really no way to directly contact someone. At wordpress, you can read through the documentation for the whole site if you so choose, or go to the forum or FAQ or contact an administrator who will email you back pretty quickly. At blogger, they have the blogger news and updates, at WP they have the Blog News which is an online magazine with editorials, articles, ads, and all the trimmings and it works like a blog so you can comment on the ongoing events and search for past stuff too. At blogger, you work with your page template (which you can change at will) and you can post and add widgets. At WP, you can work with the presentation of your posts (choosing themes and placing widgets in the side bars or you can work with Pages which you can design and fill with the content that you don't need to change. So far, I haven't seen any upgrades that cost you something at blogger, but as I pointed out above at WP if you are going to make money with your blog they want some too.