I credit Blogger for creating the phenomena of citizen journalism. I really do believe that if Pyra Labs hadn’t relased its Internet publishing tool in August of 1999, we would be a far less informed, thanks to the continuing trend of media consolitdation. As the number of independent newspapers and broadcasters dwindles, the number of online media and government watchers has increaded.
And for that, Blogger deserves appreciation.
So please don’t take this post as some sort of snooty, all-the-cool-kids-use-Word-Press diatribe: Blogger is horrible at customer service. I just spent practically an entire week trying to help a fellow blogger move his posts from the Blogger to his own Web space using his own domain name. Doing that required he be able to republish his posts using a special template that would allow them to be read by a Blogger-to-WP post import utility.
He spent some time banging his head against the wall trying to get it to work. I managed to get Blogger to publish about half of these posts. I submitted several support reuests to Blogger, but got no reply. Their “Knowledge Base” site said that this was a “known issue” and ever forum and public board I visited yielded the same information. There’s no way around it, and Blogger isn’t going to do anything
Now, I understand why Blogger — owned by Google — might not be thrilled at the prospect of someone deciding to dump their free service to move to Word Press or Moveable Type. But that doesn’t excuse such poor performance.
Bloggers own their own posts. By not supporting import tools into other systems, Blogger essentially is siezing ownership. Was this friend of mine supposed to copy and past more than a thousand posts?
If Google is going to be in the blogging business, then it needs to not stand in the way of post portability.
At this point, I simply cannot recommend Blogger for anyone starting to blog who thinks it’s possible they might get serious about it. An assumption has to be made that posts made to Blogger will be lost forever if there’s a move to a different system.
So don’t use it.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
I must say that I experienced none of this when I moved from my Blogger site to my new digs. I suppose, your mileage my vary applies here. Good luck to your friend in joining the wily blogoshpere and the world of self-hosting.
And don’t forget that Blogger is deleting real blogs for absolutely no reason too.
English Guy: I’ve never had a blog deleted, but I have had a blog taken over by new users after they sat unused for a few months.
Has anyone compiled a list of blogs lost in this way?
Bill, I think that that list would be stupdenously large. I often wonder how many blogs blogger.com has. I bet they use computer programs to delete blogs, rather than have staff do it (that explains the canned email responses too).
Amen, Bill. Amen.
And thanks for your help.
I have had little luck with Blogger, in part because I find it hard to use in general.
Blog On The Web is not too bad. But since the new software there, and since I’m not much for the CSS language, I can’t seem too customize the way I’d like… but that is alright. I like it and what they have enough to stay there for now. If I keep writing there, that is.