UPDATE: How to Blog has MOVED! Please update your bookmarks and feeds! The new address is :
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and all new posts and post updates will be made there! Comments and trackbacks at this location are now closed -- please visit the new How to Blog site in order to add a comment or a trackback and see updates to existing posts as well as all new posts from this point forward!

March 15, 2006

Excerpts of posts from the NEW How to Blog Site

Remember, How to Blog has moved to it's own domain at http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/

In order to stay current with How to Blog's content, you should start bookmark the new location - thanks!

March 15, 2006 in b2evolution, Blogger, blosxom, MovableType, plug-ins, Ramblings, Reviews, SEO, Templates, Themes, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post

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February 08, 2006

Starting a new blog? Get your own domain name! Do NOT use a subdomain of typepad.com, wordpress.com, blogspot.com (etc)

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So, you want to start a new blog. Maybe you don’t have much experience with blogging, so you don’t think it’s that big of a deal which platform you choose or whether you have your own domain name. Well think again.

Don’t fall trap to the disaster that I landed myself in, where I started casually blogging and ended up regularly blogging and hating the platform I was using but can’t easily switch because I stupidly put my blog on a subdomain of typepad (http://blogging.typepad.com)

Now I’m at TypePad’s mercy. They own my ass because they own my address - even though I’m paying $150+ a year for their service. The same could happen to you whether it’s a subdomain on typepad.com, blogspot.com, or wordpress.com.

By not having your own domain name, if you ever decide to move to another blogging platform you run the risk of losing all (or a lot) of your traffic, your search engine rankings, all of your hard earned incoming links, etc because you cannot take your URL with you.

How are you going to redirect your traffic to your new blog when you have NO ability to, say, set up a 301 Permanent Redirect? Which, for those who are wondering, would both:

  • automatically redirects human visitors to your new blog site
  • tells the search engines that your blog has permanently moved and gives it the new location

(BTW - has any TypePad user (whose blog address was a subdomain) had a high traffic blog with a lot of backlinks into it that they then moved to a WordPress blog hosted on their own server? Please tell me what your experience was, whether you lost pagerank, traffic, search engine rankings, etc!!!)

Domain names are cheap - about $9 a year for a single one, as low as $6.75 a year if you own more than 50. There is NO excuse to not have your own domain name for your blog. You will regret if at some point down the road if you don’t start out with your own domain name.

www.GoDaddy.com so83wquiom79FCDGA798BFGC8E is the site that I use to register my domain names, although there are numerous other options such as $5.99 Domain Names at 1&1, and, if you only need a single domain name the cheapiest option is domain names from Yahoo! for only $2.99.ld104jy1qwuFHPIMHOLFHGJMOIHK

The irony here is that I actually own a lot of domain names and I genuinely can’t fathom why I didn’t just use a domain of my own when I started this blog. Don’t make the same mistake as me or you could end up feeling trapped like I do right now. Consider yourselves warned.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, my point is that you need to own your own domain name so the URL for your blog points to a domain you own and control. It’s okay to use a subdomain off a domain that you own, but not one that belongs to someone else such as that of a hosted service like typepad.com.

Furthermore, I don't actually hate TypePad itself - there are truly many things about it as a blogging platform that I love.  What I despise is how poorly TypePad handles comment and trackback spam, which forced me to disable trackbacks because I was getting hundreds of trackback spams a day (much of which was obscene) and didn't have time to wade through them all - but in disabling trackbacks I'm removing one of the features that is at the heart of blogging and thus particially crippling my blog.  I want to be able to have trackbacks on for all of my posts without spending exhorbitant amounts of time dealing with spam every day.  I also have to moderate all of the comments on this blog because of the spam it gets (although not nearly as bad as the trackback spam) and that's a bummer, too - genuine comments don't appear immediately on my blog as a result (and due to the migraines I've been having lately, I haven't always been able to approve the comments in a timely manner).  The difference with WordPress is that it's plugins can tell which comments and trackbacks are likely spam and hold those comments/trackbacks (and ONLY those ones) in the moderation queue, while publishing everything else immediately if you so desire (which I do).  From what I've heard, MovableType (which is owned by Six Apart and is what TypePad is based off of) also has plugins that handle spam management well, so I don't get why they haven't utilized these plugins to handle the massive spam problem on TypePad.

And it’s okay to use a hosted solution - just make sure you pick one that allows you to use your own domain name and always reference your blog’s URL w/your own domain so that if you ever decide you want to go elsewhere, at least you’ll be able to take your traffic with you. Right now, the only hosted solutions that allow you to use your own domain are TypePad and Blogger (supposedly wordpress.com will down the line (possibly for a fee) but as of now there's no support for this).

Also of note if you're going to go the hosted blogging solution route: it’s also a good idea to check to see if whatever blogging platform you start with has the ability to export your posts (and comments/trackbacks) for easiest porting of your site to another platform down the road. As of this writing, TypePad is the only hosted system that with this functionality. Blogger doesn't have an export post function, but provides these instructions for backing up your Blogger blog (don't know if that file would then be importable into another blog system, though). While WordPress.com does not have an export function, it will let you import items from another blogging platform - but it's a one way ticket.

For full disclosure, links to TypePad are affiliate links (but as this post shows, just because I'm posting affiliate links doesn't mean I present biased info)

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February 8, 2006 in Blogger, Reviews, SEO, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (20)

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December 11, 2005

WARNING: Reports of legitimate Blogger/Blogspot accounts being deleted without cause

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As is often the case whenever there is a free tool available, it gets abused by spammers.  Such has been the case with Google’s free Blogger service, and lately they’ve been very active in trying to delete blogs that they view as spam (aka splogs). 

Normally I’d say that’s a good thing, but apparently they’ve been a little overzealous in their cleansing of the system and many individuals are reporting that their legitimate, hand crafted Blogger blogs that they spent much time on have been deleted without warning or explanation.

The English Guy has a post entitled Google/Blogger Deleting Real Blogs that I’d highly recommend reading if you’re a current Blogger user or considering using their free service.

A thread at the Blog Party forum suggests that Google is targeting bloggers that have multiple blogs which link to each other.  This is a tactic which many legit bloggers do and is a major part of how the whole blogosphere works.  It is also a tactic that is used by sploggers.  But that in and of itself should not be a reason to go on a search and destroy mission for all bloggers who interlink their sites.  The logic in that is faulty – just because a tactic is used by sploggers doesn’t mean that everyone who uses that tactic IS a splogger.

So if you’re using Blogger and you have multiple blogs which you like to link to each other, you might consider porting your posts over to another system, such as TypePad or WordPress.com, before you wake up one day to find your blogs gone and have to go through the nightmare of trying to reach support personel (which has been reported to be very difficult) and proving that your blogs are legitimate.

Consider yourselves warned..

UPDATE 1/30/06: as you can see from some of the comments on this post, blogger.com is currently on a big blog-deleting spree.  Again, consider yourselves warned!  And btw, I know I originally recommended wordpress.com as an alternative, but if you're looking to incorporate Google Adsense into your blog, you'll need to use TypePad b/c wordpress.com doesn't support 'em.  Or else switch to a solution where your blog is hosted on your own server, and then you've many more options to choose from

December 11, 2005 in Blogger, Reviews, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (5)

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August 24, 2005

Need someone to create a custom template or plugin for your blog? Need help with SEO? Check out Rent A Coder!

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I just found the coolest resource!  It’s called Rent A Coder, and you can post any project that you need help with, whether it be as simple as installing WordPress / MovableType / etc for you on your server, or as complex as asking someone to write a custom blogging platform for you.  Want a custom template for TypePad or a special WordPress theme and don’t have the time or skills to do it yourself?  Just Rent A Coder to do it for you.  You can even find people to help you with Search Engine Optimization, people to write content for you, etc.

Once you post the specifics of the project you need help with, coders will then bid on your ‘job’ and you can decide who you want to hire based on their bid, the feedback they received from other users on other projects they’ve completed, etc.

From their website:

Need a coder to help you create the next 'killer app' or answer questions?  Just post your program or question here and coders from around the world will email you bids on doing the work.

    You can review each bidder's resume and reputation online, and when you're ready to make your decision, you can rent  your personal, expert, coder with just a few clicks! Its that simple!


     Posting a bid request is free, and you are under no obligation to accept any bids sent to you unless you choose to.   Once you accept a bid, you will place your payment into escrow. The money is not released to the coder, till they complete the work according to your original specification. There are no service charges or finders fees for buyers.

On the flip side, got skills?  Flaunt ‘em and earn cash!

Looking to earn extra income using your hard-won technical skills?  Rent a Coder lets you locate and bid on coding projects and questions from around the world!  By completing a free registration, you can publicize your skills on the online resume system and receive emails as new bid requests come in.

So those of you who are creating all those great free themes and plug-ins (which I hope you’ll continue to offer for the sake of the blogging community), you may wanna consider listing your talents at Rent A Coder and earning some extra $$ through freelancing

I just did.

August 24, 2005 in b2evolution, Blogger, blosxom, MovableType, plug-ins, Ramblings, Reviews, SEO, Templates, Themes, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (6)

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July 22, 2005

Blogger now supports uploading of images

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“We've just launched Blogger Images. So now you can include photos and images in your posts. Just click the new picture icon and you can upload an image from your computer or from the web. Try it out!”

This is a great step in the right direction for Blogger, as users will now be able to have multiple images within the body of a single post, rather than 1 image per post as was required with Picasa and Hello Bloggerbot.

Still need categories and trackbacks before it is a truly competitive blogging platform – you listening Google?

(BTW, I’m sorry for the lack of posts and updates to this blog as of late.  My fiance lost his job last month so I’ve been working my butt off just trying to make my mortgage payments and haven’t been able to give “How to Blog” as much attention as I’d like to or it deserves.  Wish us luck with getting our feet back on the ground financially so I can breathe a little easier and get back to writing about How to Blog!)

July 22, 2005 in Blogger, Reviews, Weblogs | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (5)

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April 13, 2005

Step by Step guide on moving from blogger to wordpress 1.5

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Moving from blogger to wordpress 1.5: A (very) detailed step by step look at moving your Blogger blog to Wordpress.

April 13, 2005 in Blogger, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (1)

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March 23, 2005

BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature-rich interface

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Just came across a very interesting application called BlogJet.  Basically, it’s an easy to use Windows program that acts as a front-end  for posting to your blog from the BlogJet client instead of from your blog software’s own interface (usually your browser). 

From their website: Works with all leading weblog services:

 

Blogger
b2evolution
Blogging.com
BlogHarbor
Blogware
DasBlog
DeadJournal
DearDiary
Drupal
LiveJournal
Manila
ModBlog
Lockergnome.net
MovableType
pMachine
PUSHlogs
Squarespace
TypePad
.Text
WordPress
Blogger API
MetaWeblog API

Right now I’m using it to post to my ‘How to Blog’ blog on TypePad (the post you’re reading right now, actually).  You can download a free trial copy of BlogJet here.

I’m only just starting to tool around with it, but my first impression is a good one!  Make that great, actually.  Because I think it may provide me with the best of all worlds interface-wise.  For example, one of my gripes about TypePad is that you have to pop open a new window when you want to select multiple categories for your post (which, for me, is all the time).  WordPress, on the other hand, has a bunch of checkboxes and you can check as many as you want w/o having to open another page (it’s just faster, and hey, doing things inefficiently is a pet peeve of mine..).  Well, using BlogJet to compose this post, I notice there’s a drop-down box which - surprise – provides checkboxes next to a list of all my categories.  One less TypePad gripe.  Make that three – I can now change fonts mid post (except it’s a little buggy because I actually changed fonts and switched to BOLD, and clearly this text isn’t bolded when viewed from my actual TypePad site)

 

and I can(NOT) modify the alignment of the post (or a part of the post) w/o editing the html, so for example, this paragraph happens to be centered – at least in BlogJet, but as you’ll notice when this gets posted (meaning, as you read it), this sure isn’t centered – it’s aligned left just like the rest of the post.  Darn.  And while I’m bitching, how come there’s no ‘strikethrough’ option for text?

On the flip side, one of my gripes with WordPress is that they don’t have a rich text editor – you can’t just copy something from your browser and paste it into WordPress’ edit post textbox and expect it to preserve it’s formatting (and linking) structure.  But BlogJet does have this funcationality – and so now you could have rich text editing and a WYSIWYG display for your WordPress posts.  Which might sway me towards choosing WordPress as the ultimate blogging tool (when used in conjunction with BlogJet) because the features, plug-ins and customizability of WordPress are the best I’ve seen thus far.

Initially I though BlogJet had a huge drawback - no place to enter URIs for sites you want to send a trackback ping to. And a search through their online help (at the BlogJetWiki) for ‘trackback’ came up blank.  But on a lark I clicked the ‘Properties’ tab at the bottom of the window, and lo and behold, there are all of my advanced post options, including Trackbacks!  It’ll be interesting to see if and for how long I’ll actually be using BlogJet to create my posts.  As always, I’ll keep ya updated (oh yeah – BlogJet’s got tons of built-in smiley’s, if emoticons are your thing…)

It will also be interesting to see how BlogJet compares with it’s competition – w.blogger, which calls itself “The best interface between you and your blog” and is Freeware (vs. the free 30 day trial I’m using of BlogJet).  Oh, so much to do, so little time!

Update 3/22 – I’ve done all of my latest posting using BlogJet, and one of the things I’m really liking about it is that I’m not limited to a small edit box for creating/designing my post.  Hell, I can go full screen if I want to.  On the other hand, I’ve noticed yet another bug in the product — my posts are appearing in the reverse order of when I’ve created them for each particular date.  In other words, I publish Post 1, then later I publish Post 2, and then even later that same day I publish Post 3.  In the blogosphere, posts that are archived by date should be displayed in the following order:  Post 3, Post 2, followed by Post 1.  For all of my posts created on 3/22, they’re showing up in the reverse order of when they are published – Post 1, Post 2, Post 3.  So my newest post isn’t at the top.  That’s no good…  Hopefully w.blogger won’t have this little glitch… (I still haven’t had a chance to try it)

Update 3/31 – Inconsistent behavior when dragging and dropping from IE 6 pages – sometimes is retains formatting from original site (and linking), other time not.  Sometimes crashes (I was trying to retrieve my list of posts and got the following error, “Access violation at address 00435113 in module 'BlogJet.exe'. Read of address 00000000 Class: EAccessViolation” — note that this has only happened once in the entire time I’ve been using the software, and shutting it down and relaunching solved the problem..).  Can’t create new categories from w/in their interface – must log into your blogs control panel to do so.

March 23, 2005 in b2evolution, Blogger, blosxom, MovableType, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (3)

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March 22, 2005

Yahoo to buy Flickr, the popular photo sharing service used by many bloggers

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Link: Yahoo! News - Yahoo Buying Photo-Sharing Service Flickr.

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is acquiring a Canadian photo-sharing company that lets people share digital images with select groups or the whole world, expanding its portfolio of self-publishing and "social networking" services.

I’m expecting this will work hand in hand with Yahoo’s recently announced Yahoo 360 virtual community,which will include blogs and photo sharing.  While Yahoo already has their own photo-sharing service, Flickr is far superior.

I wonder if the pricing structure at Flickr will change as a result of their new parent, and if free accounts will still exist for non-users of Yahoo’s own blogging service. 

Currently, Flickr is one of the most popular methods of posting pictures on Blogger / Blogspot (which does not host its own images).  Seeing as how Blogger is owned by Google, Yahoo’s biggest competitor, it will be interesting to see how these plays out for Flickr users on Blogger.  I’m surprised Google didn’t try to snap up Flickr themselves – I guess they thought Picasa was good enough (not, especially for photo sharing).

March 22, 2005 in Blogger, Weblogs | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (1)

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March 19, 2005

Feature-by-feature comparison of Blogger vs WordPress and step by step guide on how to switch from Blogger to WordPress

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Bambit has created an excellent layman’s analysis of Blogger vs WordPress, which is a good overview of two of the most popular free blogging tools. 

She compares availabilty and demands on the user, setup speed and requirements, pages and pagination, look / feel / templates, interface and user-friendliness, and image handling.

As she pointed out, WordPress does require you to have a webhost that supports MySQL databases and you have to know how to use FTP.  However, many hosting companies will actually create the MySQL database for you, in which case I found that doing the actual WordPress install and getting up and blogging takes less than 5 minutes.

Ultimately, Bambit decided to make the switch from Blogger to WordPress (and appears quite please with her decision) - and, even better, has even gone so far as to publish a step-by-step guide to moving from Blogger to WordPress.  Thanks Bambit!

March 19, 2005 in Blogger, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (1)

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February 26, 2005

More on Blogger vs TypePad - a comparison of hosted weblog solutions

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If you're looking for the flat out easiest way to get started blogging, you're going to have to go with what's known as a 'hosted' solution.  That means, you don't need to have your own webserver,  know HTML or how to FTP (if you do, you can consider additional options such as WordPress and MovableType - check out my original article comparing blogging tools).  This brings us down to two main options: Blogger vs TypePad

Ease of post creation:

Both Blogger and TypePad provide both a WYSIWYG method of composing posts (like a word processor - what you see is what you get) as well as the ability to edit the HTML directly if one so chooses.

Blogger's user interface for WYSIWYG post creation has more options, allowing users to change fonts midpost as well as center text (or align it any way you want) without having to switch to the HTML.

On the other hand, TypePad's edit box is Rich Text compatible, so if you copy and paste something from your browser or word processor into the compose post area, TypePad preserves the formatting (and linking structure) from what you've pasted.  That's a big plus.  TypePad also gives you the ability to underline, strikethrough, insert files, and create an easy mailto link.  Blogger also has only 70 colors to choose from for font color changes without html editing, whereas TypePad gives you a couple hundred to choose from (they look to be all of the standard web-safe colors)

Winner: TypePad has the slight upper hand here

Cost

Blogger is free, TypePad isn't.  In my opinion, the nominal cost of TypePad is worth it, but if all you're looking at cost than the winner here is easily Blogger. 

FYI - I use the tzpepad Pro version, and pay for it by the year (instead of monthly) to save a little extra money.   There are two coupon codes for TypePad that I know of thus far.  The first is 'movable', which gives you a free 90 day trial of the Plus version (rather than 30 days).  The other is 'LAUNCH' (which I haven't tested), which is reported to give you a 10% discount on pricing should you decide to continue with TypePad.

ALSO, there is a free version of TypePad - sort of.  You can only access it from a Friendster account (also free), and it requires you to have ads on your blog and has a much more limited set of templates, customizability, etc.  When I tried using it to create a blog, I got repeated error msgs when attempting to do basic things (like enter a description for my blog!) so I gave up - this 'free typepad' is a buggy beta at best and not even worth the trouble at this point in the game.  If free is where you gotta be, you'd best be using Blogger.

Trackbacks

TypePad supports them, Blogger doesn't.  Trackback's are a critical way of spreading the word about your blog, as well as letting other bloggers know you've referenced them in your posts.  You can use a third-party tool to kluge trackback support into Blogger, but TypePad wins this category hands down.  All you have to do is paste the Trackback URL into the 'Send a trackback to these addresses' field and you're done.  Third party tools such as WhizBang and HaloScan entail much more effort - you've got to enter your URL, their trackback URL, your blog name, your post title, and an excerpt from your post.  To me, that's tedious even the first time I tried it.  I'm way to lazy to even consider having to do those extra steps for each and every trackback I need to send (but maybe that's just me - I'm a bit of an efficiency freak and have a pet peeve towards doing extra steps that can be avoided).

Update - typepad does not handle trackback spam very well, so I'm going to need to write a post soon comparing tzpepad to wordpress, which is awesome for handling trackback and comment spam

Categories

Again, TypePad supports them and Blogger doesn't.  Come on, Google - I've said it before and I'll continue to say it until you implement these features in Blogger - Blogger cannot be considered a true competitive blogging tool without TrackBacks and Categories.  Again, winner is TypePad.  (Anyone care to start a pool on how long until Google brings Categories to Blogger?)

Pings

Neither site allows you to customize the list of where you want to ping (a way of letting the world know you've updated your blog -- see my comprehensive list of where to ping for more info).  TypePad will ping blo.gs andYou can workaround it in TypePad by pasting ping URLs into the edit box for Trackbacks, but tools like MovableType and WordPress allow the user to customize your ping list so you don't have to go and paste that list each time you post.  Nonetheless, this particular review is limited to Blogger vs TypePad, so the winner is TypePad.

Searching of your blog by your sites visitors

Search is built into Blogger's navbar, which is not surprising since they're owned by Google.  TypePad has no built in method which allows visitors to search your blog, so even though they have Categories, a large blog can easily become hard to navigate.  Fortunately, I figured out how to add search to your TypePad blog, but as far as having the functionality built-in, the obvious winner here is Blogger.

Adding images to your blog

Super easy to do with TypePad- they'll even let you upload a zip file of images if you have a lot you want to add at once.  Impossible with Blogger unless you either A) use Hello BloggerBot (and even then, it publishes each image as an individual post, rather than allowing you to incorporate images within your post) or B) know HTML and have a webserver where your images are hosted - in which case, why are you even bothering with Blogger?

Typepad is the clear winner here.

Update - Andrew from Blogging on the Free Web wrote up a great commentary on this post, and recommends using Flickr for hosting and posting of images to Blogger.  I just checked it out, and I actually think Hello BloggerBot is better to use if you're going to try to post images to Blogger (the main reason being that you can host an unlimited number of images, whereas Flickr's free account only allows you 10MB of bandwidth transfer per month, and that includes uploads!  If you have to pay a monthly fee, may as well plunk it down for TypePad, in my humble opinion).

Display of images/photos in your blog

Again, TypePad is the clear winner here.  Not only do they host your images for you, but when you upload your image, you can easily customize the settings to chose whether or not to wrap text (with the image on the left or the right), create a thumbnail (smaller version of your image) to display with the width you specify, either in pixels or percentage, and allow you to link to the full size version of the image in a popup window.  Furthermore, TypePad even has a Photo Album feature, and templates which are designed specifically for those with a lot of images.  AND, you can have multiple photos within a single post.  Blogger makes each picture its own post.  Blogger is a BIG loser in this category.

Templates

Blogger has a very limited set of templates, all of which are two column designs.  If you want to make any modifications to the template you have to edit the raw HTML and you've got no WYSIWYG interface for examinging the changes you're making.

TypePad has more templates (all of which are easier to modify), a slicker look, and various options of how your blog will display, including the option of three column layouts, mixed media based templates and more. 

Winner - TypePad by a mile

Customization of how your blog displays

If you're not comfortable mucking around in code, you can forget about making any changes to how your Blogger blog appears, beyond switching amongst the few predefined templates that are provided.

TypePad, on the other hand, let's you fully (and easily!) customize the look and feel of your blog, allowing you to change the color and font of each element of your template, as well as what content (archives, categories, about me, link lists, etc) you want to appear AND in what order (with a drag and drop interface, no less).  Customizing your templates to get your blog to look exactly how you want is a piece of cake - and no need to know HTML to do it.  TypePad has a 'design' tab in the control panel that let's you customize every element of your blog template - from font and color used for posts to the size and color of a headlline to the border style (if you want one) for any particular section, etc. It is extremely user friendly and intuitive to use. Furthermore, the 'layout' tab allows you to drag and drop where you want your blog elements to go (Archives, Categories, TypeLists, etc). This is a really nice touch. And if you do want to get into the nitty gritty of the html for the templates, you can modify not only that of your index page, but also of your individual post archive pages, category archives, etc.

Once again, TypePad wins this category hands down.

Email your posts to friends

Well what do you know - Blogger actually has a feature that TypePad sorely needs!  In the Blogger interface, click "Settings", and then select the Basic tab (default).  Choose 'Yes' in the checkbox for "Show Email Post Links".  This allows your blogs visitors to easily email posts from your blog to your friends.  TypePad has no such built in function.

Winner - Blogger

Archiving of Posts

With Blogger, you get one choice: no archive, daily, weekly, OR monthly.

With TypePad, you can choose any of the above AND you also can archive by Category.

Winner - TypePad

Visitor Statistics

Blogger has none (yes, none!) - there's no way without using an outside tracking tool to even know if ANYONE has viewed your blog.  How fun (not) is that?  Now, you can use third party tools to implement free stats for your blog, and Andrew pointed out that, "Blogger Help points to a bunch of stats add-ons. I'm using StatCounter, which was simple to add to this blog and is working fine."

TypePad keeps a running list of how many hits your blog has received, how many visitors you've received in the past 24 hours, which pages those folks looked at, as well as the referring URLs so you know how they found your site.  While I'd like more than 24 hours worth of referral logs to look at, 24 hours is better than nothing.  But again, I could also use StatCounter (or similar) to get more detailed stats if I wanted to use a third-party.

Winner - TypePad

Commenting system

Both tools provide you the option of being notified by email when someone new comments on a post.

Both provide you the option of turning off commenting in your blog, or on a post by post basis.

My Blogger blogs haven't gotten much traffic or comments, so they haven't attracted any comment spammers yet so I don't know how Blogger handles Comment Spam, but I CAN say that TypePad gets rid of my Comment Spam almost as fast as the spammers post it.

Winner - TypePad

Number of Blogs

This is an area I forgot to address initially.  As Andrew pointed out, "Blogger lets you have as many blogs as you want. Basic TypePad restricts you to one, and Plus to three. You have to go to TypePad Pro to get unlimited blogs."

If the main hurdle preventing folks from switching over to TypePad is cost, a bunch of bloggers could conceivably band together and share a single TypePad Pro account where you can have unlimited blogs and unlimited authors, thereby drastically cutting out of pocket expenses.  (But then you'd all have to settle for your blog URL being a subdirectory rather than having your own domain or subdomain, and coordinating payment would be a hassle, even if you chose the cheaper method of paying once annually.)

I'll have to continue work on this article at a later time, but as you can probably guess, my choice for the best blogging system that is hosted for you (meaning, all you need is a web browser and you can be blogging away) is TYPEPAD

February 26, 2005 in Blogger, Templates, TypePad, Weblogs | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (17)

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