A Quick Look at Deepest Sender

After I had been comfortable using a text and HTML editor to do my offline post editing, I started experimenting on desktop blog clients. And as I always do, I started with the simplest solution.

Deepest Sender 0.9.0 is a Firefox extension. As such, it still relies on the Firefox web browser (and other foxy browsers using a similar engine). But unlike web-based post editors like Blogger’s, it does not have to deal with a variety of browsers and is therefore not limited to the lowest common denominator as I have already discussed in my previous post under the heading: Using Offline Blogging Tools. It is somewhat of a cross between web-based post editors which you access remotely and native stand-alone applications.

But speaking of stand-alone applications, Deepest Sender can be made to look just like one. Just create a shortcut to Firefox in your Desktop and append the following to the shortcut’s Target field:

-chrome chrome://deepestsender/content/

Double clicking on the shortcut launches Deepest Sender. Firefox is also launched in the background but you won’t see it, giving the impression that Deepest Sender is a stand-alone application.

The beauty of this editor is that it uses only a small amount of system resources in addition to that used by Firefox. Since I always open Firefox when blogging to check links and search for stuff, launching Deepest Sender would use up lesser additional resources than when opening a separate full-blown application.

Spell checking is provided by another simple Firefox extension named Spellbound. But if you are using an English version of Firefox 3, no further extensions are necessary.

Someone made a comment on my previous post stating his problem regarding the difference in how an image is presented in the post editor and how it is finally presented in the blog. This is a valid concern and Deepest Sender seems to have a solution.

In the Tools|Options menu, you can set styles in the Formatting Options tab. Just check both checkboxes and in the stylesheet text field, enter: body {width: 400px;}. Replace 400px with the actual width of your post column as defined in your particular template. If you cannot find it or don’t know how to, 400px is a good place start. You can try increasing or decreasing it if you want to.

While you would edit your posts in the Normal tab where the HTML is generated for you, you could also modify and add HTML elements in the Source tab. The Source view, however, is not a very capable HTML editor. It does not have syntax highlighting and auto-completion or tag insertion. But if you do not care about HTML, then that won’t be a problem.

Another cool feature it has is a “blog this” functionality. If you find something interesting while surfing and want to blog about it, just select a bunch of text in that page, right click it and select Send to Deepest Sender. Deepest Sender would then open with your selected text as a quote.

One big minus for this editor is that although the documentation said it works with Blogger, it doesn’t. I read a post in LiveJournal that Deepest Sender isn’t able to connect to Blogger for some time now. But at least, the poster tells us that it worked with LiveJournal. I also found a blog post confirming that Deepest Sender also works in Wordpress.

This could just be due to the frequent improvements Blogger is making which affects their API. Hopefully, this will be corrected in Deepest Sender’s update or new release.

For now, if you use Blogger, you have to look elsewhere.

Using Text and HTML Editors for Offline Blogging

I had GNU Emacs, gVim, Notepad++, PSPad, AkelPad, NoteTab Lite, Notepad2 and Professional Notepad shortly after deciding to try drafting my posts offline. I also had a bunch of HTML editors to go with the goodies above.

I made the decision to draft my posts offline after realizing that using Blogger’s web-based post editor bars productivity. However, before I could effectively and safely use offline post editors or blogging clients, I needed time to study how each of them should be configured properly so as not to mess up my blog. That means I can’t use them immediately.

Enter the text and HTML editors. It does not need much training to use simple text editors and I only needed to learn how to insert tags when using an HTML editor. I could use them to post while learning some offline blog clients.

Text Editors

I checked the overviews of each of the above text editors from their respective websites and from other sites like Wikipedia. After that, I was immediately able to set aside four text editors to exclude from my consideration. Now there are only four text editors left to choose from. That’s 50% off the list. They are:

• AkelPad;
• NoteTab Lite;
• Notepad2; and,
• Professional Notepad.

The Big ‘Four’— Emacs, gVim, Notepad++ and PSPad

If you raised an eyebrow after realizing what I just crossed off the list, then you must be a geek. But hear me out first before you use the comment form below as a weapon: I took them out not because they suck but because they are too much for my purpose as of the moment. Remember, the reason for all of this is to have a simple editing environment that I can use without much hassle while I learn some blogging clients.

Those four editors taken off the list are so impressive in power and flexibility that I am very much convinced that I should learn some of them in the not so distant future. While they are more complicated and a little more difficult to learn at first, the extra effort is a worthwhile investment specially for a writer. The additional intricacy you have to deal with is a small price to pay for a free text editor which could do everything a wordsmith needs to be done including washing the dishes and cleaning the floor; with a plug-in, I heard Emacs can brush your teeth for you so that upon arising, you could immediately work on your magnum opus without having to deal with the trivialities of personal hygiene.

Down to Two

Of the four remaining contenders, two were again crossed off the list (that’s another 50%) leaving AkelPad and NoteTab Lite.

Notepad2 did not make it for the simple reason that it does not have word count. Word count is an important feature for me. It keeps me within due bounds and, like my car’s speedometer, it tells me when to slow down (throwing words at you, my dear gentle readers). But otherwise it is a very good and capable text editor. So, while it did not make it to the finals, it occupied a place in my computer as a Notepad replacement. It is light and does perfectly what Windows Notepad was supposed to do.

Professional Notepad, however, wasn’t as lucky; it had to go. While working with it, I selected a large chunk of text to copy and paste somewhere. However, instead of clicking Copy, I accidentally clicked Paste. Now, the whole selected bunch of text was replaced by a URL I had previously copied. Ok, my bad I’ll just have to undo the operation. After Ctrl-Z, a dialog box hit me in the face telling me that I cannot do an undo (excuse the pun) unless I pay for the software, or something along those lines.

I checked their website and found that one of the features (6^th in the list) of their full version is: Unlimited multilevel undo/redo. Reading that list, you would think that the trial version would at least have a limited undo/redo capability—like only two or three levels, for instance. I guess limited, in this case, means none.

I don’t know if removing the undo capability was a good idea. They could have simply limited the number of successive tasks you can undo (or the number of successive undo you can make). I’m sure their program is feature rich enough to entice users to buy it even if they give out some undo capability.

It may even be a little better if they did not allow you to do a save instead because after you are informed of the limitation when you try to save, you can still copy everything and paste it into Windows Notepad where you can save it. In my case, my data have been a permanent resident of /dev/null by the time I was told that I cannot undo. But anyway, it’s their program and it’s their choice. And aside from that lack of undo capability, the program seems to be fine. Just be forewarned if ever you plan to use their trial version. Remember: in their vocabulary, limited means none.

AkelPad

NoteTab Light has a lot of interesting features which tickles my geeky bone like a clip tool library, outline documents, very good word statistics, extensibility, and other neat stuff. It could even negate the need for a separate HTML editor if you’re willing to learn it at a deeper level. But then again, I wanted something simple.

AkelPad also has word count, though not as nice as NoteTab Lite’s, in a small and simple package. Another plus for Akelpad is the simple plug-in system (actually, the word count capability was provided via the Stats::Main plug-in and activated by a Ctrl-W key combination).

One other thing is that AkelPad seems to be the underdog. I don’t know if it sounds reasonable to you but for me, if two pieces of software give me the same value, I tend to choose the lesser known or the one made by the smaller company even if the other has more features (that I do not need at the moment). It tends to foster competition which is good for all of us users. Of course, it would be a different thing if the underdog does not provide what I need.

AkelPad won over NoteTab Lite but only by a narrow margin. I would not loose sleep if I choose NoteTab Lite rather than AkelPad. In fact, had I not found a simple and easy to use HTML editor which I describe below, I would have chosen NoteTab Lite instead because it would be better to use a slightly complicated text/HTML editor combo than to use a simple text editor and a difficult to use HTML editor.

Araneae

I was a lot luckier in the HTML editor department. I had downloaded seven HTML editors and started testing Araneae, the smallest of them, first. Luckily, it fits the bill and is also simple and easy to use. To add tags, I simply have to select the text and click an element name in the right pane called Quick Clips then the opening and closing tags of that element is wrapped around the selected text. It also has nice syntax highlighting. This is practically all that I need as I only want to add markup to my posts and not to develop complex web pages.

Since Araneae already fills my needs, I don’t feel a compelling reason to scrutinize the others anymore. They are good or maybe even better, I am sure (I took a peek at some of them); and I may also try to examine them in the future for other purposes, such as for blog template editing or other more ambitious projects. But for simply marking up a post, Araneae will suffice.

A small problem is that the available elements listed in the Quick Clips sidebar are a little limited. I’d like to add more to the list like: acronym, abbreviation, lists, cite, quote, some em and en dashes and ellipsis. Fortunately, it was easy to do. First, I found that all the available HTML elements provided in the right pane are contained in a file named XHTML.clips in Araneae’s extentions folder. After looking at how the others were declared, I was able to add my own. Pretty.

AkelPad + Araneae + Blogger = Safe Way To Blog

I then had a text editor for writing and an HTML editor to insert markups. All I had to do now was copy the final marked up text to Blogger’s post editor and publish. At first, it might sound too much of a trouble but actually, it isn’t. My workflow goes something like this:

1. Open Firefox, Araneae and AkelPad;
2. Draft my post in AkelPad, using word count frequently to check mileage;
3. Right click | select all | right click | copy in AkelPad;
4. Alt-tab to Araneae and right click | paste;
5. Select paragraphs and click on the paragraph element on Quick Clips;
6. Select headings and click the appropriate element in Quick Clip;
7. Insert other tags as necessary;
8. Right click | select all | right click | copy in Araneae;
9. Log-in to Blogger, click new post and right click | paste in the post editor;
10. Squiggly lines would show some misspelled words if you’re like me, so edit as needed then publish;

I believe that this is a solid approach: Nowhere is it better to edit text than in a text editor; A dedicated HTML editor is better than most compound software; and nothing is better at publishing your post than Blogger’s own post editor. This system would always work no matter how often Blogger updates its API.

And that’s about it. After I had this workflow going, I started checking out some cool desktop blog clients. The examination was not really very formal or scientific but more of a first impression kind of thing. I’ll be sharing those observations with you in the posts to come.

A Venture into the World of Offline Post Editors and Blog Clients

Posting on your blog using Blogger's post editor (or your blog platform's own post editor, if you're not using Blogger) is a common and sensible way to start. I started from there too. But as I discussed in the previous post, it is either a little bit limiting and error prone (in Compose view) or less than efficient (in Edit HTML view).

Using Offline Blogging Tools

That led me to search for and download tools which would help me compose my posts offline and then publish it. My theory is, if the tool runs offline, a wider variety of functions and methods are available to it because it runs on a richer platform - such as Microsoft Windows (Win32), Java, or .NET - which provides more services.

In contrast, online or web-based tools like Blogger's post editor runs in your browser and uses it as its platform or environment. It has limited access to resources outside the browser. As a result, it can only use functions and methods your browser provides. If you think that is limiting, just wait until I tell you that it doesn't even use all of these already limited feature set. For the sake of compatibility, web apps would only use the lowest common denominator of browser features - those features present in commonly used browsers.

Blogging: The Unix Way

The geek in me got excited after the dust settled. Plenty of programs now reside in my hard disk and call my computer home. Lots of programs to play with, so little time. But being a PragmaTechie, the first thing on the list is to find the right tool to get the job done and not to polish and play with those tools.

But determining the right tool means reading all relevant documentation, browsing the Web, searching forums, and testing them all. Unfortunately, I don't have that much time before I have to use the tool. I am also afraid of just using any of those tools without first knowing how to use it properly. Blogging tools directly interface with my blog and if I do something wrong, it might mess up my blog - like delete posts or something. And, if I could, I won’t go back to editing posts in Blogger's online post editor.

My solution was to revert to the Unix way of doing things. In Unix, there are small programs which only does one thing but does it well. If you want something done, you mix and match these little programs and connect them using pipes to achieve your desired results. This is good for flexibility as a simple rearrangement would yield a new, different result. It's just like playing with Lego blocks.

Applying this to Blogging, I could use simple tools while I figure out how to use those all-in-one offerings. I could just use a text editor to do, well, text editing and use a simple HTML editor to add the markups. I would then copy everything to the Blogger post editor for publishing. At least I won’t be doing my editing there. So off to the Net again for some goodies.

Text and HTML Editors

At the end of the day, I had a pretty impressive catch. I got eight text editors to try: Emacs, gVim, Notepad++, PSPad, AkelPad, NoteTab Lite, Notepad2 and Professional Notepad. The first four are oh so great and I will be using them in the future - specially Emacs - once I get around reading that manual. All (except the last, which is a trial version) are free.

As for HTML editors, I got seven of them. I only need a simple one, though, since I don't plan to use it for web design or development. Just simply to add common and custom markups easily to my posts.

The Plan

As stated previously, I decided to try offline blogging clients. My plan is to use a text and an HTML editor for posting to my blog while I am still learning a new blogging client. Once I get comfortable with one, I'll try posting directly with it. I'd then go on to try another one in my list until I can find the best tool for me. Currently, I am still in that process (I just got comfortable with Zoundry Raven and am using it now to edit and post this entry). As I go along, I'll relate to you my adventures (and misadventures) in the wild world of offline post editors and blogging clients.

Powered by Zoundry Raven

Using Blogger's Post Editor

What do you use for publishing entries to your blog?

When I started out, I exclusively used Blogger's web–based post editor in compose view. This is the default method most new bloggers use. Others with a different blog platform would probably use their blog's control center to draft, edit and publish posts. After you went through the hassle of setting up your blog—specially if it is a self–installed one—you don't want to mess around with other software. You just want to start blogging now. As for me, I didn't even know that other tools exist. So, t'was the Compose view for me. Besides, it looks WYSIWYG enough for me to avoid the code, or so it seems.

However, I found some problems with this method. After writing a post, changing the font, writing some more, adding an image, changing the font again on some parts, rearranging text, changing indentation, and then changing the font of quoted text, the editor became confused. Clicking on preview would show that the latest changes were not applied and some get mixed up. The cause became apparent when I peeked into the generated HTML of my post—it was so grubby. There were empty span elements on one corner, nested spans contradicting each other with different font–families, empty div elements from where an image was moved, and other unsightly junk.

The post editor does not seem to generate clean HTML once it gets confused from multiple changes. It might work better if you just compose your opus first, apply the formatting only after the text has been finalized so that additional changes are avoided, then immediately publish the post. But me being me, this is a tough thing to do. While composing, I need to emphasize text and style quotes then and there because after 400 words or so, I might forget which text to emphasize. I'd then have to spend a considerable time reading the text more closely and hunting for those words I previously intended to emphasize.

I can't blame Blogger for this. It won’t be easy to migrate the functions of a full–fledged HTML code generator or WYSIWYG editor to a web application specially when you consider that it should run on a variety of platforms like Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari, Chrome, Flock, and others. Even simple web pages render differently in these different browsers.

With the shortcomings of the post editor's compose view, I decided to use the Edit HTML view. Here, I'd have to manually enter HTML but it won’t be much of a problem as I'm not really that afraid to code. Of course, it would have been much better if I could simply focus on the post.

Everything went well since then except for the fact that I have to manually type all those tags. Imagine all those additional keystrokes. It also gets kind of confusing reading through your post with all those tags. I needed something more; something with an insert HTML tags capability and syntax highlighting to make coding and reading easier. I knew that I can only get that in an offline editor.

But it's not only the monochromatic nature of the online post editor and its insistence that I type each and every HTML tags manually that led me away from it; It also auto–saves my post as draft after a certain time. That's a feature!, you say. True, but this feature uses the text in your Title field as the filename of the post when it is auto–saved. Being the filename of your post, it appears as part of the post URL. If the Title field is empty, because maybe you've yet to decide on one, then it uses the first few words of your post as its filename which, again, becomes part of the post's URL. The problem arises when you change your title or populate the previously empty field. The new title would now be different from the filename and the URL. This would affect your SEO potential. I also do not want to disable this feature even if I can because that would increase the probability of data loss.

So I have to resort to offline means. This way I can use an application which can assist me in inserting those interesting but difficult to type HTML tags and highlight them for easy reading. I can now also allow auto–save on my work offline thereby preventing the possibility of data loss while being free from an undesired automatically generated URL. The search for the best offline editor started and I found a lot of free options so I downloaded and tried them all. I'll share with you my first impression on each of these tools in my next posts so that those time spent clicking and exploring would not be put to waste. Who knows, you might be like me who thought that there are no other worlds beyond the blog's post editor.

Blogger vs Wordpress - The Search for the Best Blogging Platform - Part 5 - Conclusion

A lot of discussion and myth-busting happened in the previous posts where I tried to impart to you what makes Blogger secretly great. In this post, we are going to wind down and try to answer some final questions.

I believe that Blogger, while quite popular, still does not have the attention and prestige that it truly deserves. It has been downplayed as simply for beginners that will soon be outgrown by them. This is partly due to the misconceptions surrounding Blogger which I hope have been cleared by now.

Bloggers give the impression that no pros should take it seriously; they then enumerate its disadvantages. The problem is, these disadvantages really applies only to hosted platforms in general and does not apply to Blogger most of the time. If you care to learn (X)HTML, CSS, and Blogger's custom tags (Page Element, Fonts and Colors, Widget Template), it could be profitably used even by the pros. To support that position, I enumerated the usual advantages of hosted platforms, that Blogger is, including the not so obvious ones. To round it up, I sought to shed some light on the misconceptions surrounding Blogger's weaknesses.

By confirming the advantages of Blogger and challenging the alleged disadvantages, I wanted to show that Blogger is the way to go except in a small number of circumstances. That last statement recognizes that while I believe in Blogger's capability, other platforms might fit some users better. That answers one of the final questions namely: if Blogger is so great, should everybody be using it?

There are other questions. I would also like to explore with you the users who are better served with the software generally considered by many as the most powerful self–installed software the blogging world has ever known. I'd never put in issue the power and flexibility of Wordpress. That's a given. But sometimes, you simply don't need that power and flexibility specially when the price you have to pay in terms of complexity is high.

Taking into consideration the capabilities of Blogger and the complexity of Wordpress, I think that the only people who will be best served with the latter are those who need to do something on the server–side of things such as PHP, MySQL or ASP and other server–side programming or those who need or want to tinker with the code of the platform (Wordpress) itself. Those who are in the job market for a web developer or webmaster position would also find it beneficial to have such an installation to showcase their relevant skills like a portfolio of sorts.

Some who are into blogging but mainly want to connect with their friends and acquaintances are better served with hosted platforms with a social network slant such as LiveJournal. For those who would like a beautiful ready made template but does not care to edit their template code because for them HTML elements look like gunk, then Wordpress.com won’t be a bad idea even if it doesn't allow HTML editing in the free service.

But for everyone else, there is Blogger.

Blogger vs Wordpress - The Search for the Best Blogging Platform - Part 4 - What makes Blogger Great (Continued)

We discussed the advantages of Blogger which happen to be shared by other hosted platforms in the previous post. In this installment, we go a little bit deeper and explore the benefits unique to Blogger.

Good AdSense and Feedburner Integration

Is it even a wonder why? Of course, Blogger, AdSense, and Feedburner are all owned by Google. We're not yet even mentioning Picasa where you flaunt your online album and where you can upload photos for your blog. This upload, by the way, could be done within Blogger and works so seamlessly. Then there's Google Analytics to talk about; then the Keyword Tool; and then the Webmaster Tools…

But among all the very useful tools and services from the same company who also owns Blogger, two deserve special mention—AdSense and Feedburner. AdSense integration, along with the rest of Blogger's benefits in this post, is what separates Blogger from the rest of the hosted platform crowd—which is why, as I've said in my previous post, it is unfair to put Blogger under the same category as the rest of them.

Other hosted platforms such as Wordpress.com and LiveJournal does not allow monetization—AdSense or otherwise—in their free service (Wordpress.com) or in any way (LiveJournal). Good for you if you are not thinking of monetizing your blog or if you even consider it as a taboo subject; but for the rest who think that a little ad won’t hurt, Blogger is the way to go. While ads can be added in Wordpress.org (no pun intended), it's so much simpler in Blogger that you need not bother with the other (yeah, yeah. I just can't help it.). You can even create your AdSense account from within Blogger! How cool is that?

You have a blog. And you are wise enough to host it with Blogger. Now, you want to offer RSS feeds for your readers so you sign up with Feedburner. Instead of using the Feedburner address or URL, you use your own and simply redirect it to Feedburner from within Blogger. This article from Feedburner support explains why you would want to redirect your feed instead of just using your Feedburner URL. It explains, in part:

Once you redirect 100% of your feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed, you get a very complete picture of your feed-consuming audience, including where it's coming from and what content it's finding most popular in your feed. That's great. But if this audience is almost entirely subscribing to feeds.feedburner.com/myexcellentcontent, they will be stranded if, for some reason, you should choose to leave FeedBurner and revert back to your original feed address or some other service.

No problems, you are using Blogger. Had you been using a different host, say self–installed Wordpress or some hosted platform, you wouldn't have been able to do the redirection (actually, it's possible with Wordpress but you have to tinker with what they call the CNAME variable in your domain registrar's interface and do the redirect from there or perhaps with an additional complexity of a plug–in; but, you get the idea). Therefore, you have to use the Feedburner URL.

There are two problems with that though:

1. www.mydomain.com/feeds looks much more professional than www.feedburner.com/yourdomain;
2. if you decide to transfer from Feedburner in the future, your RSS URL would change from www.feedburner.com/yourdomain to www.anotherrss.com/yourdomain—loosing readers along the way who have already subscribed to your feed using the previous URL.

If you use your own feed URL, it will stay the same even if you change RSS providers as this is your own URL. You'll simply have to redirect it again to the new provider's URL. However, you still get the benefit of Feedburner since your own feed URL is redirected to theirs. To sum this up, Blogger + Feedburner = Perfect Combination.

Configurable

This, along with the immediately preceding and all succeeding points are not what you would normally ascribe to hosted platforms like Blogger. But then again, Blogger is not your average hosted platform. It would bench–press your car and run a couple of laps just for its warm–up.

No other hosted platform could even approach the configuration potential of Blogger (I would have used "configurability" had it been a word). There are a lot of Gadgets you can add to your blog to increase its functionality and coolness factor from within Blogger. And in case you need something it does not provide, there is a catch–all Gadget called HTML/JavaScript which would enable you to add third–party functionality or other code to your blog. If this wasn't enough, you are allowed to roll up your sleeves and tweak the template code directly, if you don't mind a little grease. If you know (X)HTML/CSS, this ability to tweak the code directly would give you a degree of control which is limited only by your skill and imagination.

Other hosted platforms would not allow you the same liberties. Some, for a fee, would allow you to do a fraction of what Blogger allows for free.

As to this point, Wordpress still reigns supreme—no pretensions. There are still things you can do in Wordpress that you cannot do in Blogger. But practically speaking, these things are few and far between. Sometimes, for most bloggers, the additional flexibility is not worth the hassle of using Wordpress and making it work; and Blogger's advantages more than make up for Wordpress' seeming advantage in this area.

Flexible Design

Blogger has been criticized for not having design flexibility. This is probably because of the perceived flexibility other platforms have due to the number of templates available such as in the case of Wordpress.com. But that is not flexibility. In Wordpress.com, while there are more templates, you are still limited to them. Even though Blogger has fewer templates, your flexibility is, in fact, limited only by your own skills and imagination as said earlier because you are allowed to modify the template code itself. This cannot be said of Wordpress.com where you cannot touch the HTML and CSS code unless you pay for a premium price.

Additionally, you can use the Page Elements view of Layouts to drag and drop design elements in an almost WYSIWYG fashion. In this department, Wordpress does not really have an upper hand unlike in the previous point because, with skill, you can also craft your blog in whatever way that suits you. If you want, it is possible to download other Blogger templates from sites other than Blogger.com. You can even hire a professional designer to do the job if you are somewhat artistically challenged.

Control of my URL

Another of those so–called disadvantages of hosted platform that plainly does not apply to Blogger is the lack of control of your URL. It goes something like this: Wordpress is more professional because you have your own URL like www.name.com. In hosted platforms, according to them, you get name.blogspot.com or name.wordpress.com. Well guess what? You don't have to settle for blogspot.com if you don't want to. You can use your own URL—for free! The most important thing here is that you have an option. If you want your own URL, you can buy one and use it in Blogger. If you don't want to be bothered with it, fine. In the case of Wordpress, you just have to hit the road and shop for a URL. No URL, no dice.

Easy Transfer to a Different Host

While it is true that it's difficult to move to a different host if you are on a hosted platform, this does not apply to Blogger. Blogger has defined methods of backing up your whole blog or, in the alternative, exporting it so that you can transfer it later to a different host. No headaches here so keep that Advil stored.

Retain Traffic

Since I could use my own URL, I need not loose my traffic if I would decide to move in the future. Regardless of my host, my URL remains the same. So, all bookmarks and links will still work and regulars could still reach me if they type in my URL in the address bar.

To end this list, it should be noted that Blogger can be used by beginners but is not limited to them. There is a lot of room for advanced bloggers to play. The nice thing is that these advanced features are hidden under the hood so as not to intimidate beginners or those who don't want to get down and dirty. The design caters to both beginners and advanced. This is in stark contrast to other platforms which are either difficult for advanced users to tweak (most hosted platforms like Wordpress.com) or for beginners to use (most self–installed platforms like Wordpress.org). But since these advanced features are hidden, a lot of folks mistakenly think that they aren't there.

Wow, with benefits exemplified in the previous post and myths de–myth–ified in this current post, we are now ready to end this series. But not quite yet. In the final installment, we will answer if Blogger, being the greatest of them all, is the best answer to every platform question. Let us also take the chance to explore the other types of users and the possible platform for them.

Blogger vs Wordpress - The Search for the Best Blogging Platform - Part 3 - What makes Blogger Great

The previous post in this series laid the foundation for this discussion. It explained why this comparison focuses on Blogger and Wordpress.org instead of the more general hosted vs self–installed platforms.

Old Blogger to Blogger Beta to Blogger

By the way, before we start I'll let you in on a little secret: The Blogger you knew before February 2003 when Google acquired it was a different Blogger from the current offering. This new and improved Blogger, which I'll simply call as Blogger, is like the old Blogger on steroids. It's been hitting the gym lately, I heard it said.

This means that some comparisons you might stumble upon on the net might refer to the old Blogger or to Blogger Beta which is a sort of pre–release version of the new Blogger. Looking at the publication date is not of much help either specially when the article chronicles a blogger's move from Blogger to, say, Wordpress. While the date may seem recent, the information regarding Blogger might still be what the poster knew when she was still using Blogger when it was still a couch potato, remote on hand and nachos nearby. In a word, beware; you might see Blogger portrayed in a false light, though unintentionally. So, the next time you encounter a comparison saying that Blogger has no Categories, just say to yourself that Blogger has something even better; and it's called Labels.

Now let's move on and I'll show you why I believe Blogger is the biggest thing since Blogger (pun intended).

Ease of Setup

Blogger is among the easiest blog platform to set up. You can set up a blog in less than five minutes. It's only a matter of filling up forms and choosing your template. The only time consuming step in the process is the part where you choose your blog URL (should I use mycutestcat, cutelilmissy, or cutecatomine). Due to this, Blogger has been described as for beginners. Don't let that fool you into thinking that Blogger is unsophisticated, though. Advanced users can set it up with their own domain names; they can set it up to publish on a different host; they can make the set up as difficult as they wanted to gain the functionalities they want—but only if they want to. It is optional and not forced upon the user. This is unlike Wordpress where you simply have to do those things. While Blogger is for beginners, it is not for beginners only.

If you go to the self–installed route with Wordpress, you would have to jump through a lot of technical hoops before you can even start writing your first post. In fact, you have to jump through technical hoops before you can jump through another set of technical hoops. The first technical hoop you have to contend with is looking for the right registrar to register your domain name. Then, there is the question of hosting. You have to learn all those stuff like bandwidth and scripting capabilities not to mention things like cPanel interfaces. Then there's the technical hurdle of the software installation itself. While all these may not be rocket science (to some), it is still something you can do without if you choose Blogger.

Cost = Free

Well, what can I say? Free is free; can it get any better than that? While Wordpress is also free to download (it's Open Source—"free" as in freedom and "free" as in beer), there's little you can do with it if you don't buy a domain name and hosting space. Although the cost of having a domain name and hosting space may not be much, "some cost" still comes out as greater than "zero".

Simple to Operate

As with most hosted solutions, Blogger is simple to operate and use. If you can use a word processor, Blogger won't be much of a challenge for you. It won’t get in the way of your writing. I can not say that using Wordpress would be much more difficult but having more complexities to deal with, like your host, plug–ins installed, etc., would make it a little less easy than an integrated solution.

Zero Maintenance

You don't have to concern yourself with installing patches, plug–ins, and updates. If Blogger decides to update its software, it just happens seamlessly in the background. If, on the other hand, Wordpress decides to release a new update, you have to download it, upload it to your server, and install it there. What's worse, you might not even know that a new update has been released and fail to update your server thereby compromising the security of your installation (if it happens to be a security update). With Blogger, you won’t miss any updates—that's for sure.

Good Security

Related to the benefit stated above is security. It would be very hard to keep up with the crackers or system intruders who seem to have all the time in the world. You, on the other hand, have a blog to run and an exuberant community of readers and followers to inform/entertain/educate/bash. Needless to say there may be times when an important update would slip through your notice. But you will soon be reminded of that fact after seeing your defaced site. I've read of some Wordpress sites which have been hacked but not of Blogger sites getting the same treatment. This is significant when you consider that most Blogger users are what many old timers would call beginners and that most Wordpress users are techies or at least have their sites maintained by techies—some are even by webmasters.

SEO and Traffic

After signing up with Blogger, you are already part of the big and growing blogspot community. This is true even if you get your own domain name and don't have the blogspot domain. As this community is linked together—from the Blogger home and the next and previous links in the navbar—you are already linked! Do I need to say that links are hot commodities in the web in general and in the blogosphere in particular? You are already a step ahead.

These advantages are shared by most, though not all, of the other hosted platforms. However, they are not the only reasons for choosing Blogger. In the next installment, I'll give you other reasons why Blogger is so great. Those reasons are special because not only are they unique to Blogger, they are some of the weaknesses of other hosted platforms which Blogger has, in the past, been categorized under. So, stay tuned to the next installment.

Blogger vs Wordpress - The Search for the Best Blogging Platform - Part 2 - Why Blogger?

My previous post was an introduction to my quest for the best blogging platform. In that post, I hinted that Blogger fitted my circumstance quite well. I'll try to show you why this is so. Who knows, it might also be the best fit for you.

Wordpress and Self–installed Platforms

As you read on, please note that any mention of Wordpress in this series, unless otherwise specified, refers to Wordpress.org which is a software you download from the website of the same name and install in your own server. For that reason, it is referred to as a self–installed platform or software. Now, your server may be in the same room as you are, in the same house, or may even be in the same continent lounging in the air conditioned environment of your hosting company while being attended to by geeky types in a lab coat wearing goggles and gloves—the difference is moot.

Note also that platforms or software which are referred to as nonhosted, self–hosted, or self–installed are the same in most cases and will be treated as such in this series. For uniformity, I will use the term self–installed as it is what I consider the most accurate term.

Blogger.com and Wordpress.org

But first of all, you might ask why this series deals with Blogger vs Wordpress and not Hosted vs Self–installed blogging platforms. It is true that the latter approach would have been more methodical as we can start from the general then narrow down to the specific. For instance, you and I could first find out if a hosted platform would better suit our fancy; If so, we could then look at all the varieties of hosted platforms and proceed from there; otherwise, to the self–installed blog platforms, we go.

Sounds good so far. Problem is, it's a logical fallacy that all hosted blog platforms have a degree of similarity in flavor which justifies lumping them up together under the same category. In fact, this could be one of the reasons why Blogger is wrongly downplayed in favor of Wordpress.

Take a peek at what would happen when someone tries to decide what blogging platform to use using that approach. She first asks: Hosted or self–installed?. Searching the net, she found that the former is restricted in options and the latter is more professional. So, she tossed the former, Blogger along with it, and choose the latter. After that, Wordpress is almost always the default choice, so she went for Wordpress. She could also have been happier with Blogger.

This does not do Blogger justice. Blogger has a lot of features found almost exclusively on self–installed platforms that lumping it up with other hosted platforms is not fair. This post aims to cast the limelight at Blogger—the limelight it rightfully deserves but has for so long been deprived of.

As to why Wordpress in particular and not self–installed platforms in general, it has already been stated that Wordpress is almost always the default choice in self–installed platforms. It is what most people mean when they refer to this type of platform. So I decided to focus on Wordpress. But for those interested, there are also other kinds self–installed platforms:

• Movable Type
• ExpressionEngine
• Manila Userland
• Radio Userland
• Drupal
• Mambo
• NucleusCMS
• Textpattern
• Habari
• Serendipity
• Chyrp
• B2Evolution

Some of those enumerated above are Content Management Systems (CMS). As for hosted platforms, here's a partial list:

• TypePad
• UserLand ManilaSites
• Wordpress.com
• LiveJournal
• Windows Live Spaces
• MySpace
• Yahoo! 360
• Vox
• Blog.com

Why I choose Blogger

My research in the best platform for my blog yielded both pros and cons of hosted platforms along with the pros and cons of self–installed platforms. But what made me choose Blogger was not only the pros of hosted platforms and the absence of the disadvantages pertaining to self–installed platforms but also the fact that most of the alleged cons of hosted platforms does not apply to Blogger. Blogger has all of the advantages of hosted solutions but almost none of the disadvantages! It truly should be in a class of its own.

My main reasons are as follows:

• Ease of set up
• Cost = Free
• Simple to operate
• Zero maintenance
• Good in attracting search engine attention and traffic
• Good Adsense and Feedburner integration
• Configurable
• Flexible design
• Control of my URL
• Easy to move to a different host
• I won’t lose traffic if I do move

You read through the list, then raise your eyebrows, stand up, point at me and say—

you: I'm smellin' somethin' funny 'roun here!

me: That couldn't be me.

you: No! Its them bullet points 6^th to last.

me: They're quite pretty, aren't they?

you: Might be, but they aren't what I'd call them hosted. They're fer nonhosted—or whatcha call self–installed. 'N fact, they're precisely the weakness of them hosted blogs. Yer not trickin' no one!

me: Nope, not tricking anyone. While you are correct in pointing out that those qualities pertain more to self–installed platforms and showcases the lack of hosted blogs (instead of their strengths), it is a little bit different in the case of Blogger. Blogger has the advantages of hosted blogs but almost none of their disadvantages, as I already mentioned before, which is why my post became longer than I expected, thereby making me unable to fully expound the reasons listed above as I undertook in my previous post. But no worries; while I only listed those reasons here, I will be discussing them in detail and show that Blogger has the advantages of hosted platforms but almost none of their disadvantages. Really! So just sit back while I deliver it to you in my next post.

Blogger vs Wordpress - The Search for the Best Blogging Platform - Part 1 - Introduction

I woke up one morning with this crazy idea in my head. I wanted to blog. Maybe it's because of some weird dream I must have had that I just could not remember or because I realized that everybody's doing it and it is something big. Whatever the reason might had been, I wanted in!

First Encounter with Blogging Platforms

After packing up, I prepared myself to commence my journey to this wonderful place they call the blogosphere. But not so far from whence I started, I found my way blocked by a monster of a question not unlike the mythical sphinx of old.

The path beyond is hazy and unclear and to make further progress, I needed to answer the riddle: What blogging platform to use? Simple, I said. I wield a weapon so powerful that the greatest of swords in the legends would pale in comparison to it in vanquishing this monster.

I whipped out my trusty laptop; its keys, polished through constant use, shone with the sun at meridian. Lucky for me, there was wi–fi. I did not wait a millisecond more; I immediately pounded at the keyboard and found myself in Google's search page not a moment later. I typed in my search terms (using quotes, operators, parentheses, and all other tricks I can think of) and pressed Enter, as I said: Take that!.

What Platform to Choose?

I expected a definitive answer so that I could deal with this monster once and for all and be already on my way. What I got, however, was not what I expected. A definitive answer, I did not get. Some said Blogger, others said Wordpress, and more than a few said Typepad. There were also these hosted and nonhosted varieties. What's worse is that this Wordpress thing refers to two completely different beasts and sometimes, I got directed to pages which does not specify the platform they are referring to.

If you think this confusion regarding the two flavors of Wordpress is merely academic, Daniel Smith of smithereensblog.blogspot.com will tell you otherwise. In one of his posts, he relates how he registered with the wrong service. He thought that this was the Wordpress version he had been hearing great things about. Daniel said: What I didn't know, however, was that all of those rave Wordpress reviews I had read MUST have been talking about the fully customizable, downloadable product for hosting on one's own domain, available at Wordpress.ORG, because they certainly couldn't have been talking about its crippled little brother over at Wordpress.com.. He is also one of the few who moved from Wordpress to Blogger—or make that Wordpress.com to Blogger.

Then I Chose Blogger

It was not an easy question to tackle as it seemed to be at first. While I got through that one (obviously; otherwise, I wouldn't be here telling my tale.), it took a lot of searching, grappling, and re–searching. Hence, I resolved to document my findings and share it in this series of posts in the hope of helping others who might, one day, pass through the same path that I have just traveled and where the monster lies in wait. By the way, the answer, for me, is Blogger. In my next post, I will expound why I chose Blogger.