How do you blog? here
are basically two ways of making a blog. Most people choose an online editor and
provider such as blogger.com, blog.co.uk, myspace.com, and so on. The other way is the way
this blog is made, using an offline editor - a program on your computer just
like a word processor or web-page creator - in this case iBlog from Lifli
Software.I experimented with both methods before 'going live' three years ago. I tried Blogger, which seemed the best of the online services, as well as iBlog. The advantages of Blogger are that you can post from any computer: you don't have to host the blog yourself: their front page provides links to current blogs. The disadvantages are that though a fair amount of customization is possible you are still locked in to the way their system works: and that you are entirely dependent on their servers - were there to be a serious crash you could lose the entire blog (though this is fairly unlikely), and you have to be online to post or edit - and if the connection fails (and this can happen) then you wouldn't be able even to save as draft. (I would be inclined to write offline and paste in, for this reason). The advantages of iBlog are that you have a high degree of control over your blog - you can amend the look of it and get into the nuts-and-bolts of the code to a high degree: and that you maintain a full copy on your computer and control over the server. The disadvantages are that the blog will take up an increasing amount of space on both your computer and server; that you can only post from your own computer (though you can run it on both your desktop and laptop), so mobile blogging is out; and that there is little built-in publicity (though you can use sites like Technorati). As so often with these things, neither solution is ideal: both have their points. In the end I settled for iBlog, even though there were some things I liked about Blogger. I feel happier dealing with the entire creation and publication system myself, and using my iDisk (a server run by Apple which appears as a network disk on your desktop and provides 1GB upwards of storage) is simple. Though it does have the odd operational quirk (though less so than many of these shareware programs) iBlog appears to have no obvious bugs - I certainly haven't fallen over any so far - which is a commendable achievement. And it's inexpensive at $30 - so even though Blogger is free the cost difference is insignificant. Unfortunately iBlog seems to have gone moribund - the web site is still there at the time of writing, but the support and forum sections have gone, and I gather that no-one can get any response. It's possible to download the program, but I don't know whether you can actually pay for and get an activation code. It's a pity if it has gone, given its features. iWeb and RapidWeaver can both produce blogs, but I don't think they are as good. Posted: Thu - February 5, 2009 at 09:39 AM by Roger Wilmut |
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Total entries in this category: Published On: Mar 11, 2016 05:00 PM |
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