Archive for the ‘Blogging Tools’ Category
by Regnard Raquedan on October 14th, 2009
A blogging platform used as a content management system (CMS) is not really new. This blog has outline several reasons why WordPress as a CMS is feasible. Open source systems like WordPress are ideal for such an application because of the inherent “hackability” of the app to be shaped into other uses. But what about closed systems like Google’s Blogger?
Here are two situations wherein Blogger may be a possible CMS for you:
- When you’re pressed for time – You can purchase a domain name and use it on a Blogger blog very quickly. Themes for Blogger is also available and easy to implement.
- When user management is not crucial – The thing with Blogger is that, as of now, there are only two levels of users: Authors and Administrators. If you’re the one who will be managing the content, then Blogger is OK.
Undoubtedly, making Blogger as a CMS is a challenge. Unlike WordPress, there is no “Page” content type, only generic blog posts. Also, the URL’s of Blogger posts are automatically generated. This feature makes it hard to create pages with specific titles reflect on the URL.
To make Blogger into your CMS, a few simple steps are needed:
- Remove all gadgets, expecially the archive and label
- Download a Blogger template with a navigation menu and removes the post date.
- To manually remove the date header in the post, go to “Edit HTML” in the Layout editing section. Make sure that “Expand Template Widgets” is checked and look for “<data:post.dateHeader/>” and remove it
- After writing the site’s content, take note of the URL. Edit the template’s navigation bar to direct to the post’s URL.
Blogger may not be the most elegant of CMS solutions, but there are select situations that it might work.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools
Tags: blogging, tips
by Darnell Clayton on October 13th, 2009
After purchasing an iPhone 3GS about a week ago, I was excited to see what new video blogging apps have emerged since the iPhone 3GS’s launch this summer.
While it seems like every twitter app from Twittelator Pro to Tweetie 2 is including video and/or audio (via third party hacks), a quick scan through the app store revealed a scarcity of video blogging apps–all of them by third party companies.
Thus far CellSpin and BlogPress are the only major video blogging apps out there, with the latter allowing you to post multiple video’s per post.
So my question is where are all of the video blogging apps? Can anyone explain?
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: iphone, Mobile Blogging, Video Blogging
by Brian on September 30th, 2009
You can do all of the hard work researching topics and writing content for your blog but all of your hard work is worthless if no one will actually visit your blog and read your well thought out posts.
All blog owners should not only improve their writing and research skills, they should also develop their internet marketing skills. They should learn how to market their blogs so that they can entice people to visit their blog and continue reading the posts they make. A properly marketed blog is also a great source of income. Imagine getting more money from the ads that you put in your blog? That’s a benefit I’d love to get from my blogs.
The problem is that internet marketing is a subject that intimidates a lot of people. Personally, I don’t think that this should be a source of fear. Internet marketing is not really that hard especially if you have the tools to help make things easier for you. For example, Twitter is quite easy to use. The popular microblogging platform is now widely used as an internet marketing tool. Its popularity makes it an obvious choice to implement marketing efforts because of the number of people that can be reached by the marketing message. Because of its effectiveness as a marketing tool, it’s also a natural progression that independent tools are developed to further mine the capabilities of Twitter.
Tweet Whistle is one of these tools that have unleashed the power of Twitter. Tweet Whistle is a marketing tool that allows you to market your blog in Twitter more easily by automating Twitter’s functions. With this application you can automatically target followers and even automate your Twitter posts. What’s more, Tweet Whistle is the most affordable Twitter marketing application you will find on the net. You can see for yourself how useful Tweet Whistle is by trying the trial demo, which you can download at http://www.tweetwhistle.com/.
But if you want the opportunity of using the full version of Tweet Whistle for free, you can join Tweet Whistle’s contest, wherein the winner will get a licensed copy of Tweet Whistle and a $25 cash prize to be paid through PayPal. To join the contest just do the following:
1. Follow @thetoolsmith on Twitter
2. Just tweet the message below:
Just enter to win $25.00 and a free copy of “Tweet Whistle” Just follow @thetoolsmith and Retweet http://tweetwhistle.com
Categories: Blog Software, Blogging Tools, Microblogging
Tags: contest, marketing, Tweet Whistle
by David Peralty on June 12th, 2009
ScribeFire is a great Firefox extension that adds a pile of blogging related features directly into Firefox.
It allows you to create (and edit) posts, set (and create) categories and tags, and generally does most of what you’d want to do when creating a new blog post directly from within Firefox at the click of a button.
Here’s a list of the blogging software and services it supports…
* Blogger
* Drupal
* Jeeran.com
* Livejournal
* MSN/Live Spaces
* Performancing.com
* TypePad
* Wordpress
* Wordpress.com
The newest update fixes a small handful of bugs and adds a few features, such as support for custom post slugs for WordPress and the ability to export/import blog settings to and from other installations of ScribeFire, making it easy to setup multiple blogs on more than one computer.
One thing it’s still missing that I would really love to see in a future update is the ability to set the “parent” for a page in WordPress. It allows you to create pages, but if you want to set it’s parent you still have to go into the WordPress admin panel.
Still, it’s a great tool with enough features that most people probably would hardly ever need to use the built-in post editor for their blog again.
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: blogging, blogging tool, firefox extension, scribefire, software
by Darnell Clayton on December 17th, 2008
It looks as if Byline (a popular iPhone app for Google Reader) and BlogPress (the unofficial iPhone app for Blogger) are teaming up for the holidays by offering users the chance to download one of their respective apps for free after purchasing the other application on iTunes. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: Blog Software, Google Reader, iphone, Mobile Blogging
by Darnell Clayton on October 16th, 2008
I think I have just seen the future of iBlogging–and behold it looks glorious.
Called LiveJournal.app, this iPhone app was created mostly by Igrick (with some design help from Damper and Igor-Safonov) of CosySoftware, (note: link is not working as of this post) who comes from the frozen nation of Russia.
Although this app is specifically limited to LiveJournal, CosySoftware’s ingenius approach to blogging on the iPhone may force every other iBlogging app to copy their features (whether they choose to connect to LiveJournal or not). Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: iphone, LiveJournal, Mobile Blogging
by Darnell Clayton on September 16th, 2008
If there was one company determined to dominate the mobile blogospher
e, it would have to be ShoZu. Connecting with almost 350 different mobile devices, ShoZu is enabling bloggers (regardless of their phone type) to post from their phone (and away from their computer).
But what sets ShoZu apart is not how many mobile platforms one can blog from, but rather how many blog platforms one can blog to.
ShoZu connects to not only the traditional platforms (such as Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Windows Live Spaces) but also the unfamiliar (like Netlog, freewebs, Multiply and even Six Apart’s Vox.com).
While ShoZu has always had an iPhone app for users to test out since the birth of the app store, I decided to give it a second look after hearing about the numerous improvements regarding this iPhone app (with most of them being positive). Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: Blogging Software, iphone, Mobile Blogging
by Darnell Clayton on September 12th, 2008
Despite providing powerful platforms for their users, both Blogger.com (owned by Google) and Six Apart seem to be rather slow when it comes to creating apps for the iPhone.
While SixApart has provided an iPhone app for Typepad, they have yet to develop anything for MovableType, leaving the field wide open for third parties.
One company from China however is taking advantage of this opening, by creating a powerful iPhone app for not only the “big three” (Blogger, MovableType/Typepad, WordPress) but for MSN Live Spaces as well.
Called BlogPress (which was previously highlighted by Andy), this app was developed by CoolLittle Things, who ironically encountered some resistance (note: english translation over here) submitting their app to the iTunes store.
But with BlogPress costing a whopping 999 pennies (or about $10 USD), BlogSpot and MovableType fans may wonder whether purchasing this app is worth it.
So instead of spending potential gas money (or even lunch), you might want to check out the review below to see if this iPhone app is worth spending money on. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: Blogger, Blogging Software, google, iphone, Mobile Blogging, MovableType, SixApart
by jim on August 28th, 2008
Social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia.com is opening its doors to the open-source world. They have announced at Gnomedex 2008 that they would soon distribute their code publicly, akin to how WordPress.com has done for WordPress.org, the latter being a website that the public can download freely the full WordPress code.
This is a much anticipated move for the Ma.gnolia.com team as developments in technology are striding faster than the Ma.gnolia core tech team can handle. With their move to open-source, we will soon see a much improved service offering. Ma.gnolia’s Larry Hallf at Gnomedex 2008 says the following:
Some of the things to look forward to in this next version include:
- A new stream view that shows you the freshest bookmarks of people you’re friends with on one single page.
- Support for both OAuth and OpenID, with the latter making it easier for people to sign into hosted builds of Magnolia.
- Sidebar customization
- Theming
The open-source version won’t be available to developers until sometime in September, with a beta version (read: consumer friendly) on track for December and into the first part of 2009. In the meantime, if you’re a developer looking to get your mitts on the code it will be made available here.
Categories: Blogging Tools, Interesting
by Darnell Clayton on August 19th, 2008
Hate! Loathe! Whine! Spit!
That’s the first impression I received after browsing through the reviews of Six Apart’s iPhone App on iTunes.
While many were upset that a TypePad account would cost them 495 pennies a month, others seemed upset that this app would not work on Movable Type (or even Vox) despite the obvious indication that this is a TypePad only app. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: Blog Software, iphone, Mobile Blogging, Six Apart, typepad
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