Blogger Buzz announced a range of new features today which brings the aging blogging platform more up to date.

Being one of the oldest, free blogging sites, Blogger has matured over the years and has flourished under the purchase of Google but has lost out to more feature rich packages such as Wordpress and Moveable Type.

Enhanced Template Editing:
Blogger now supports a drag and drop interface for editing the template. Wordpress has had this for a while now with its “widgets” enabled templates and vast array of plugins. They also state that there will be a new range of templates available, although when I set up a test blog in their Beta area, only the old default templates were available, but updated to include the new additions.

Picture 1

They have made it easy to add information to certain parts of the blog but have still missed simple and important things like adding an image to the header!

Categories:
They have also added the functionality that Blogger users have been crying out for – CATEGORIES!!!!
Although they call them Labels, but they basically perform the same function as Wordpress and MT categories.

Who Goes There?
Blogs can be restricted to only allow certain logged in users to read the blog. Password protected posts and blogs is also something that Blogger users have been asking about for quite a while now.

Feeds:
Enhanced RSS feeds are also available with a few extra different options.

So, after all the waiting for these items to be added, Blogger pulls a few good things out of the hat, but Wordpress still leads the pack in terms of power, scale and customisation. All of the new items previewed at the Beta Blogger have been built in to Wordpress or available as a plug in for some time.

Blogger still trails the pack.

Related: