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July’s Technology That Works
By Larry Hendrick | July 2, 2005
It is time again to pick one of the pieces of technology I use on a regular basis and give it credit here on the page. This month it was a difficult choice between two software programs I use daily. The winner, however, is
WORDPRESS
my blogging software of choice. WordPress is my third platform to blog in so I think I have a good feel for the good, the better, and the best. Each move has been an improvement in different ways, which I will highlight in this post.
I began my blogging experience using Blogger. This free service is now provided by Google having bought the service a couple of years ago. It has a lot of features for a free service, but also has it’s limitations.
PROS
It is FREE and that is important for a beginning blogger who is not sure it is something they will be possessed by to continue through a course of time. It has one button templates to change the look of your blog, and allows email posting from your mail client.
CONS
As with most free services, you give up a few things. The email posting is a pro, except that it only works on occasion. They are always working on server issues and when I would check with support about posts not showing up, even after three or four days, they would be “working” on it. This became more frequent as time passed. Delays in regular posts and display issues finally got me looking for other alternatives. One that might offer more control over the site itself.
Next, I moved to MovableType and put it on SanLeon.Net
PROS
This allowed more control over some of the setup, and handled picture uploads very well. It supported email posts by setting up a “secret” email address that it pulled from, just like Blogger does.
CONS
It proved to be almost impossible to change templates to change the look of the blog. It proved almost impossible to schedule delayed publishing (which I use a lot), and it proved almost impossible to tweak any part of the display. For delayed publishing, it requires you to run a cron job on the server to run every so often and publish any with times older than the current time.
Now Wordpress…
PROS
Total control over setup and configuration made easy. It handles delayed posting natively, just by setting the posting time to when you want it to show up and clicking “publish”…done. It supports email posting in the same manner as Blogger and MoveableType, by sending to an email address that it checks for mail to publish. Template changes are the easiest of any of the tools so far, except you have to look at the hundreds of “Themes” and decide which one you would like to use. By putting any Theme into the folder on the website, you then click one button to change it.
Plug ins add functions that extend the overall usability of the program, too. Spell checkers are available for installation and sure make it easier to catch those elusive misspelled word.
CONS
Before adding a photo plug in, WordPress needs help with photo uploads, but this is easily taken care of with PhotoPress. It handles the upload, makes the thumbnail and inserts the commands into your post. With this it makes it as easy at the other two on photos and even improves, because I can now set the size of my thumbnails and the size of the full picture. Total control.
That’s it for my quick review on the different blogging tools that I have used. All work, but I have become a real enthusiast for WordPress.
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