Blogger or WordPress

For small business

[shallow]

Which is better, if at all, for a small business website?

I'm helping a friend who can not afford to spend a lot on a website. She is non-technical and knows nothing about set-up or back-end stuff. From the little I know about the free WP and Blogger, I thought it would be good enough.

She will be using the site as "business card" not looking for throngs to find it.

I understand Blogger is the easiest between the two. But is it the better?

She will need main categories and subcategories, with articles appearing under subcategories. It would be nice to be able to create a photo album.

One of my concerns is that when using a Blog, the dates show for each post. As far as I know, there is is not way to prevent this. She will not be posting a lot, and would like to avoid having the site look dated. If the site has 20 pages, it will be a lot!

She has her own domain and can eventually switch the blog location. She was using Homestead before this.

Any advice, or alternative suggestions, would be appreciated. Ease-of-use and set-up are top priorities.

[ergophobe]

I find Blogger templating a lot harder than Wordpress, so I would tend to go Wordpress unless I needed to run ads or something, which last I checked, you couldn't do on Wordpress.

[shallow]

Thanks for the info ergophobe. I came to that conclusion after doing a bit more research. Blogger is much more flexible for future growth. It places some ads on a blog, but they can be removed for a small annual fee.

[creative craig]

I would say that Wordpress is much more flexible for future growth.

[ergophobe]

>>Wordpress is much more flexible

I'm not sure that's true for the hosted version (could be - it's been a while since I've used either), but it is definitely true overall.

If you're not liking the hosted version, you can export your data, host your own and have all the flexibility of Wordpress self-hosted. No way Blogger can compare with that. There are probably scripts to import from Blogger to WP, but WP to WP is going to be simpler.

[shallow]

Thank you again.

In a way, it will be like the blind leading the blind. Though I developed my own sites years ago with FrontPage, I hired a web developer to put my site into WordPress; more than a simple template.

I know nothing about backend stuff. Still, I am hoping I can set up a simple site for her. I think there are themes available for a nominal fee that can make a blog look and feel more like a website.

I really appreciate you help. Whenever I stop by these forums and ask a question, I feel like I've gone into a fine restaurant and asking if they serve baby food. You're all so admirably techie-inclined.

[ergophobe]

>>I know nothing about backend stuff

You don't need to know anything really. If you're on a hosted solution at blogger or wordpress.com (either using a subdomain or your own domain), you don't have access to the backend really. If you host your own, most hosts offer something like Fantastico which gives you one-click Wordpress installs, and then almost everything else for WP can be managed from the dashboard, including installing plugins and updating the core backend.

I just spent the morning with an author who I helped get online with Wordpress and he's been blogging up a storm, customizing his site and all that and just today I found out that he doesn't know what FTP is.

>>make a blog look and feel more like a website.

What, to you, is the difference between a blog and a website? To me, a blog is a subcategory of website. Websites can be blogs, forums, storefronts, brochures, portfolios, etc, etc, etc. And in fact, all of those can be run off Wordpress except forums, which can be run off a WP sister product.