First, some "Grand Steam Dreams" blog miscellania.
I have added a new section at the bottom of the left-hand column titled "Claus's PC Toolbox."
My intent is to put links here to some of my posts that I am constantly coming back to for reference and link access.
Blog Posting Tools and Resources
While working on this side project, for some reason, I began to wonder what limits Blogger puts on its free accounts; might I be in danger of hitting a posting ceiling? I quickly found the following key information What are the limits on my Blogger account?
Blog number = unlimited
Post size = mostly unlimited
Comment numbers = unlimited
I suppose the thing that concerned me most (although I fully understand the reason) was the image limit. I don't know of a good way to easily find out how close one is to hitting that limit. I guess the best advise would be to try and use small pictures or have them hosted on another location then cross-link to them on Blogger if you are concerned.
The best solution would be to pay for your own personal blog hosting. This way you get your own domain-name and much better control over storage limits on content. Paul Stamatiou has a great guide on getting this set up. WordPress also offers a great server-end blogging platform. Their setup guides offers great tutorials as well.
I'm not quite ready yet to take my blogging experience to that next step--but the day is probably coming.
What I end up doing is composing in Performancing, then copy the HTML code into Blogger's on-line editor, do some tweaking, then post. My biggest issue is that the Performancing color code isn't the same format used by Blogger and some things get kooky when adding text-formatting in Performancing first.
The Software List
I went searching for (free) alternatives, and did find the following blog editors (some more known than others will be):
Performancing for Firefox - (free) My primary blog editing application. You can also incorporate an additional extension (Spellbound) for "live"spell checking.
w.blogger - (free) I really like this one, except for the fact that it uses ActiveX and isn't quite a "standalone" application by itself. It interfaces with either IE or Firefox. That isn't bad, but I would prefer it to be it's own application.
Bleezer - (free) Still being developed, but I like the fact that it doesn't require "installation" and could potentially run off a USB stick for portability.
BlogDesk - (free) simple blogging client. Basic GUI but it has all the required elements. Well worth considering.
Chronicle Lite - (free) Quite polished. My issue here is that it requires you to log into your blog account to begin. I'd like my blog editor to allow me to just compose and save blog posts locally without any connection to my blog, or log on when I want to for posting--like Performancing allows.
RocketPost - ($/free) is another often-recommended blog posting tool. The $ version supports unlimited blogs, while the free (basic) version supports one blog on Blogger. I downloaded and tried the Basic version. It was very polished and cool. I had to uninstall it, however, as it rendered my Logitech trackball mouse almost unusable. While Rocketpost was running, my mouse tracking speed crawled to a turtle's pace. When the program was closed out, tracking returned to normal. I will try it out on Lavie's laptop to see if it works better with the mouse tracking there.
Qumana - (free) WYSIWYG blog editor. Allows you to embed commercial ad-links into your pages--if that's the sort of thing you're into with your blog.
Zoundry - (free) Also allows you to embed commercial ad-links into your pages--again, if that's the sort of thing you're into with your blog.
Flock - (free) Integrated web-browser (mozilla based), social networking and blogging tool. Lots of features.
Visit Weblogs Compendium for an extensive list of additional blogging tools (server and client side based). This is a really good listing.
Also plan a visit to ProBlogger's A-Z of Professional Blogging index. Lots of tools and resources here for bloggers.
See you in the skies,
--Claus
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