The Weifang Radish 2

I’ve been experimenting with Blogsome lately as an alternative, The Weifang Radish, to WordPress.com. For me, the major advantage of Blogsome is that it is not blocked in China as WP.com is. Despite this, however, I can not say I will be making a full switch to Blogsome any time soon.

Some observations:

0. Apples to Apples: Both Blogsome and WP.com are running WordPressμ. μ, or mu, stands for multi-user.

1. Customizability: Blogsome offers the ability to edit the index.html file. Blogsome also claims you can add plugins, “To install a plugin you generally just need to put the plugin file into your wp-content/plugins directory”. However, I suspect this is a bit dubious, as I have not yet figured out how to access the wp-content/plugins directory. Anyway, WP.com does not offer either of these features. For a savvy user with the required knowledge and a desire to tweak, Blogsome may be a more attractive choice.

2. Import and Export: WP.com offers importing and exporting of entire blogs; Blogsome does not. Blogsome does, however, offer importing of blogrolls, as does WP.com.

3. Themes: While WP.com offers more themes, 39:27 at the time of writing, Blogsome offers many themes WP.com does not, such as Darkfire, extreme2 and Human Condition. Unfortunately, I could not get Darkfire to tie some links to images in my posts, though I tried a variety of tricks and browsers. Using other themes I found this was not a problem, so the problem most likely lies in Darkfire. Too bad, I liked Darkfire.

4. Blogroll Categories: In WP.com, when you choose a category for a specific link in the blogroll the link shows up under that category in the blogroll on the blog, easy-peasy. In Blogsome, it is not quite so straightforward. A trip to the support forums yielded a few tips and tricks:

Question: I was wondering about whether the categories in the blogroll section could be displayed in the blog itself. What I mean is something like this:
Friend’s Blogs
John
Fabian
Jamine
Richard
Interesting Blogs
Blog1
Blog2
Blog3

Answer: Try this code:
<h2>Links:<h2>
<ul>
{get_links_list category='-1' before='' after='' between='' show_images='0' orderby='_id' show_description='-1' show_rating='0' limit='-1' show_updated='-1'}
<ul>

Not quite as straightforward as WP.com’s solution, though if you want to hack it it does offer more flexibility.

5. Managing Links: An advantage of Blogsome over WP.com is that it allows users to assign a set of links to a category. In WP.com this must be done one link at a time, though you can work around that in WP.com by exporting your links as an OPML, username.wordpress.com/wp-links-opml.php, editing that file and then reimporting. The same trick works in Blogsome too, username.blogsome.com/wp-links-opml.php.

6. Sidebar: WP.com offers a simple way of creating and editing sidebar widgets with a GUI under Presentation > Sidebar Widgets. It seems that the only way to do this in Blogsome is via editing the index.html file, which again is more powerful in the end, but requires quite a bit more technical knowledge and time.

7. Saving and Publishing: When I click the Save, Save and Continue Editing or Publish button in WP.com, WP goes ahead and does what it is told and then reloads to the appropriate page. When I do the same in Blogsome it saves the changes I made, but then just spins forever without reloading. I have only been using Blogsome for three days though, so this could just be a temporary problem with their servers. Alternatively, this may be an issue with the web in China, but I find it happens even when using a proxy.

8. Tracking: If there is a tracking feature built into Blogsome I have yet to find it, though I am sure one could add a third-party tracker via editing the index.html file. WP.com offers built-in tracking of both page views and RSS subscriptions.

Simply put, Blogsome is neither as easy to use nor as robust as WP.com. A lot of the time I feel like it’s working against me more than with me. As a Mac user, this is not the philosophy I subscribe to.

In conclusion, Blogsome’s main strength over WP.com, aside from being accessible in China without using a proxy (for how much longer?), is that it is more customizable, offering the ability to add plugins and edit the index.html file. Simultaneously, the inability to do this in WP.com is perhaps WP.com’s greatest weakness, although WP.com disables these options for security reasons, which could also be seen as a strength.

Tags Blogsome, WordPress.com, WordPress, Review, Blogging