Blogging Tools
For quite some time now I’ve been looking for the right blogging tool. I’ve tried RapidWeaver and iWeb. I’ve developed a site using Dreamweaver and managed it in Contribute. I’ve tried social web sites such as Blogger, Classmates and MySpace. All of these tools and services seem to have their place, but I still find them lacking in one manner or another.
What I really wanted was something platform agnostic, where I could blog from just about anywhere at any time. I don’t want to have to rely on an application that sat on a desktop because I don’t use one computer to do all my work on. The computers that I do use are a mixture of Mac, *nix, and Windows. I have yet to find a desktop blogging tool that does everything I want it to do that runs on all three platforms. Then there is the whole other issue of getting things to sync between the different computers, maintaining a consistent tool and feel, updating the software or reinstalling it if you wipe your system clean. I’m sure I could simplify things by consolidating all my systems into one but due to the type of work I do that just would not be practical.
What did make sense to me was to use an online system that would allow me to configuring things the way that I wanted, that would constantly be available. Allow me to start an entry, save it and come back to it when I was ready to work on it again from any system that I might be working on at that time. I also wanted the ability to post video and photos online for friends and family to see, which means that I needed a ton of storage space, and the software to manage it.
What I finally decided upon was a combination of online tools that I’ve setup on a web host provider that I pay a annual subscription fee. For blogging I’m using WordPress which is a very popular tool that is managed all through your web browser. For video and photos I’m using Gallery which is also a very popular tool for managing multimedia libraries online. My host provider is giving me around 300GB of storage online which should keep me going for awhile.
