Tools Of The Trade

In a fit of inspiration and boredom, I thought it might be time to have a bit of a better look at this here blog thing, and how it’s put together. I originally started out like many others with a Blogger account, and in fact it still exists to this day, have a look. As you’ll see there I was far from consistent and often went weeks and weeks without writing. I like to go back and read it though, it’s odd to think I’ve been doing this for over fiver years now.

Fast-forward a few years and things had changed, I had my own hosting for a start! I got a bit carried away with installing database driven scripts for one thing or another; forums, galleries, files managers… you name it, I mucked about with it and invariably broke it. I installed WordPress after searching for a replacement for Blogger and wanting a bit of control for myself, and it’s been on ever since. Sure, I’ve customised it with an edited template (which for the record I still love), a few plugins to provide me with stuff like spam control and visitor stats, but essentially it’s still the same thing.

When it comes to writing these though, the actual posts themselves, there’s a huge variety of ways to do it now. I’ve always been a fan of the WordPress internal editor which does a great job – and thankfully now includes automatic draft saving – but I’ve toyed with others too. For a while Flock was my primary browser, it’s built on the Mozilla Firefox base and includes just about everything budding Web2.0 fans could ask for, things like Flickr account integration and an inbuilt blog editor. If you look back about a year and a half ago you’ll probably see some posts tagged with ‘posted from Flock’ or something similar. It was good, but I missed my Firefox install with its many extensions and themes, so it bit the dust. With Firefox I had a dabble with the Deepest Sender extension, which again worked well, but still felt a bit "tacked-on". So back I went to WordPress and its TinyMCE editor.

Bringing it all back up to date though, I’m writing this at present with a program I had no knowledge of up until a few weeks ago, Microsoft Live Writer. It’s an odd little program, sort of a cut-down word processor aimed solely at those of us who like to self-publish (blog). It’s a clever beast as it supports all of the major blogging platforms, such as the new Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, Livejournal and a whole heap more. It’s great for switching between views too, and there’s no need to load a ‘preview’ of what it will look like, you can type directly into the style or theme you use for published articles! You can save your drafts locally and on the server, insert tags for your favourite blog digest site, and basically do everything you’d do online. I never thought I’d rave about a Microsoft product aimed at hooking into the current web trends, but I really like this piece of software. If you find yourself posting regularly, have a go, it’s free and well worth a look.

(apologies Mac and Linux users, this was a bit windows-centric, if anyone knows of a comparable equivalent, feel free to educate me)