I have installed an interesting application – BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com.
It allows you to edit posts for your blogs while you are offline and publish them later.
“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein
From the Problogger, Darren Rowse – How to Add to Blogging Conversations And Eliminate the Echo Chamber. For it to be a conversation then each post should add some content to the dialogue.
From Techcrunch – Look Out MyBlogLog – Here Comes Explode. This could be interesting for social bookmarking.
The Technosailor tells us How to Enhance your Blog’s SEO and Attract Relevant Traffic in One Easy Step by making sure outgoing links really are relevant to your site.
This is useful, from Maria at WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide blog – FeedBurner E-Mail Notification Article Now Online.
 For a while I’ve used a neat trick to do something like this by using Blogger.com’s email post feature to send the post directly to a Google Group. Almost an instant newsletter, with the blog as a member of the group. I wasn’t game to try the reverse and have the group email posts to the blog, but it could have been interesting!
There are a few questions you need to ask yourself when choosing a platform for your first blog:
* Do I want a free blog, or do I want to pay for it
* Do I want it hosted on a blog platform, or do I want to host it on my own website with my own domain name?
* How technically capable am I?
* Is blogging just a passing interest for me or am I seriously in for the long haul?
Remember, whichever decision you make here can be changed later, but there might be a cost to it.
For example, if you move from a hosted blog to hosting it yourself, be aware that the address (URL) of your blog will change. It will change from something like yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.wordpress.com to something like www.yourblog.com. This will mean that if you have developed a loyal readership, with many links to your site from other blogs and directories, RSS feeds, and a good rank in the search engines, all of these will be lost. You will more or less starting all over again.
I can’t answer these questions for you. What I will do is outline my own journey into blogging.
Back in 2002 I became aware of the blogosphere (the universe of all blogs). It wasn’t called that then, but was becoming popular as an easy way to build and use a website. I had constructed a number of free sites, and was just beginning The Roaring Mouse webhosting business. One problem when you build a website for someone else, or even yourself, is that when you want to add or change something you have to edit the HTML or PHP, etc code and then upload the resulting files to the site using FTP. This is a laborious process requiring considerable technical knowledge.
I came across the Blogger.com service, and it seemed an answer to my dreams. I could quickly set up a blog using their templates. They would host it for free, and updates could be easily made using their simple WYSIWYG editor, and instantly published to the site. Anyone could do it. And what’s more, if I wanted I could even host the blog myself on my own domain, but still use their interface to post articles to it.
This is the route I chose. I still use Blogger.com for many of my blogs. It is simple to setup, easy to use, and the templates can be edited to give a degree of individualization to your site. They have just upgraded to a new version which is even better. It has added some features previously lacking, and also allows you to host your blog at Blogger while using your own domain name. Of course, as you browse the web you will see blogs that look far more attractive, and have more features than your own, and you will see mentions of other platforms such as Typepad, MovableType, Wordpress, and numerous others.
I’m a skinflint at heart, so I like a bargain - and what could be a better bargain than free? So I decided to have a look at using Wordpress.org. While you can host your blog with Wordpress itself, at WordPress.com, most Wordpress blogs are self hosted. If you have a webhost who provides Wordpress installed on their servers, as most do, then you are away. I went to my control panel, to the scripts library, clicked on Install Wordpress, and all the files appeared on my site using a default template. It was simple to do, and the result looked quite simple too. But it worked well. From my Wordpress blog I could login to my own administration pages and set about customizing my blog. I found that there have been many themes (templates) written by users for Wordpress blogs.
I’ve now used a number of these, and customized them to my own liking. There are plugins available that are easily installed and add exciting new features to your blog, such as comment spam eliminators, calendars, blogroll generators, sitemap generators, and so on. I now have a number of Wordpress blogs, but still more Blogger.com blogs. A number of these do not have much traffic yet, so I might migrate them to Wordpress. There are tools available for such migration. However, several do have a significant readership, so I will probable retain them and keep a foot in both camps. This is not a bad idea, because there are exciting things happening in both communities, and I would like to be able to contribute to the life of both. This is a great strength of the blogging community - the wealth of expertise available and the willingness to share it and help each other out.
Next time we will look at building a blog with Blogger.com, before tackling a Wordpress blog.
Further Reading:
Darren Rowse, the well known Problogger, has a good article on choosing a blog platform.
Related Articles:
Blogging is presently the most popular way for people to put content onto a website. To put it simply, a blog, short for weblog, is a website which has a simple interface whereby the owner can place content easily and quickly onto the site. No knowledge of coding or page design, no use of FTP clients or other special file transfer tools is necessary - it is as simple as typing up your content and clicking on a button to publish it to the site. Once posted, as this is called, the content appears virtually immediately.
One reason blogging has become so popular is because free blog hosting services, such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com, are widely available. Blogger is probably the most popular of the hosted services, providing a very simple interface, and a wide range of features for you to personalize your blog. If you have your own domain name and website, Blogger can also publish your posts to your own site. Wordpress is similar, but is perhaps even more suitable if you wish to publish to your own site. However, this does require a little more knowledge of website construction.
Other systems are available, such a Typepad, which requires a fee to be paid, and these are also well worth investigating for the features they offer. Most blogs typically contain text, but posts can also consist of graphics, photographs, sound and video. Many video blogs are constructed by linking to videos posted to
YouTube. The posts on a blog are usually organized chronologically, with the date and time of the post displayed, and the most recent post at the top of the page. As the number of posts grows too large to display on the main page of the blog, older posts are archived so that they can always be retrieved later via links called permalinks.
Most blogs have the facility for readers to post their own comments on the things discussed, using a simple interface provided by the blog system. The comments either appear at the end of the post, or are accessible via a link. While sometimes commenting is abused by spammers, and might then be turned off, the ability to comment and provide quick feedback is one important reason why bloggers so easily form communities around a particular topic.
So, what are blogs used for? In fact, a blog can be used to convey any type of information, from descriptions of your latest holiday, complete with snapshots, deep philosophical discussion, opinions you don’t mind airing in public, tutorials about how to do anything at all, to the latest products available from your business.
The blog post you are reading is part of a tutorial blog, The Blog Works. If you go to a reasonable mystic you will see a philosophical blog discussing issues of spirituality. Then, if you go to Mals Meanderings you will find the day-to-day ruminations of a small church pastor.
These are a few examples of my blogs, and on them you will find links to other blogs either I have made, or that I read regularly. These lists are what are called blogrolls, and are a simple, and largely automated way that you can place links to other blogs on your own posts. (more…)
Welcome to The Blog Works!
The Blog Works is all about building a successful blog. Success is measured in different ways for different people:
You might just want to share your personal thought and discoveries as you journey through life, in which case you want a blog that is quick and easy to use, but which expresses your personality in its appearance. You may or may not be concerned with who or how many see it – it just needs to be there, with your thoughts, photos, music, whatever!
Or, perhaps you have a message that just must be heard. There are many blogs on the web that support some cause, or help to propagate an idea, whether it is political, philosophical or religious. They need as many readers as they can get, and the blog must communicate well and appear professional and convincing.
Maybe your blog is to support a business. Perhaps it is the business! Not only must it clearly display the product, but it must entice the reader to come back time and time again. Traffic is king, as the saying goes.
Then, some blogs are just for fun. They are like the huge laughing mouth at the entrance to St Kilda’s Luna Park – inviting everyone to come in and spend some time relaxing.
Whichever type of blog you wish to build, at The Blog Works we plan to point you at the best tools to acheive it.
If you have a suggestion, a comment, or just want to talk about these issues, feel free to post a comment. And, since blogging is all about shared communication, we are happy for you to put your link in a comment, but please make it a comment and a link that is definitely relevant to the post and helpful to other readers.
While we are talking about sharing, if you have a blog which you think is helpful to other blog developers, post its URL in a comment. If I like it I’ll mention it and put it in a blogroll. This will give you another link to help you gain visitors. A return link on your blog would be appreciated.
We hope you enjoy your use of The Blog Works, and find something of value to help you in your own blogging.
