Blog Writing Software for the Mac

These are some of the Mac blog clients, or editors, I've tried. A good blog client lets you:

• Blog without a live Internet connection.
• Work with your favorite browser to capture pages you've visited quickly.
• Publish and retrieve your blog posts from the program.

Visit the sites, and read my reviews below.

• MacJournal ($35)
• MarsEdit ($30)
• ecto ($18)

MacJournal I started using this as my preferred writing tool, instead of Word or another bloated word processor. I really like full screen editing. I can drag a URL from my browser's address bar and MacJournal displays the page title with a link to the URL. This is my favorite feature when I'm surfing. I like the WYSIWYG editor, too. Its ability to publish and edit blog posts off line are a plus, making it a legitimate blog editor. Plus, it supports tags for your posts. On the downside, the post downloader isn't completely reliable, so it's really just a good place to start blog posts. I find myself always having to put the finishing touches on the posts using the blog's on-line tools. MarsEdit A cross-platform commercial program, this software excels at getting the latest version of your blog, but the editor is text only. ecto infinite-sushi.com - ecto I like the editor more than MarsEdit, that's for sure. It's got a great WYSIWYG editor, and you can toggle to HTML -- that rocks. Plus, I can drag links in from the browser address bar. Very nice. The biggest problem: Ecto & Blogger.com -- lots of extra hard returns appear in the posts after I upload them to Blogger. com

Blogger.com Setup Checklist

Follow these steps to get your blog ready for prime time:

1. Set up your new blog in Blogger.com. Use the blogspot.com hosting to begin.
2. Post some content. I like to start with something like “Welcome to my blog! It’s about ....” In other words, post your statement of purpose.
3. Test your blog by viewing it. Tweak the layout and settings as required.
4. Move your blog to the “official” URL
5. Insert Google Analytics code into your blog. Test to see if the code is inserted correctly by reloading your blog and selecting View Source.
6. Go to your Google Analytics Settings and [Check Status] of your blog. Be patient -- it may take Analytics a few hours to recognize your site, even if it’s configured properly.

Blogger.com browser performance

I was using the Blogger. com Create Post form in Camino on my 1 GHz iBook Mac, gforce (640 MB RAM), and it was so easy for me to get ahead of the cursor that I had to give it up. My G4 processor kept maxing out, too. It was like wading through Jello. Now, I'm on Firefox running on an 1 GHz Intel Pentium III Gateway, the Goat, with 256 MB of RAM, The Goat is running Windows XP, and the CPU working, but it never gets above 60% or so. This translates into very comfortable performance. So, Blogger.com is basically unusable on the Mac G4. It's fine on my G5 iMac, iFive, also running Camino. Windows XP and Firefox perform admirably on the Pentium III at the same chip speed, 1 GHz.

10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once)

Links and summaries of important articles all aspiring bloggers should read.

Different Google Listings in Different Countries

This may be obvious when you think about it, but it is still weird to see it in action. I just got back to the States from Montreal, Canada, and Google serves up very different search results. In Canada, one of my blogs is indexed, but not here in the good old USA.

Tumblog your blogs into the Google index

I started my Tumblog on June 12, and today, Tuesday; June 26, 2007, two weeks later, ten items in my Tumblog are indexed in Google. That will, theoretically, send the Google index bot to each of my blogs (including this one) that feed into my Tumblog. Let's see how that works -- if it does, it's one of the fastest ways to get your blogs indexed that I've found to date.

Is Your Blog Indexed? Use Google Webmaster Tools to Find Out

To see what your blog looks like from Google’s perspective, use Google’s Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Central - links to all the Webmaster tools Google Webmaster Tools - Site Status - see if your site or blog is indexed using a simple wizard interface.

Promoting Blogger.com Blogs: Send Pings

I’ll start my testing with the simplest option: ask Blogger.com to ping the blog notification services. On my blog, Neil's Open Source & Linux Blog, I turned on pings on July 20. Here’s how:

1. From the Blogger.com Dashboard, click Settings.
2. Under the Settings tab, click Publishing.
3. For the Send Pings option, select Yes from the drop-down menu.
4. Click [Save Settings].

Does it work? So far, no. Here’s how I test:
Enter the URL to your site in the Google search field, preceeded by “site:” -- like this:

site:http://njlinux.blogspot.com/

See the results here: site:http://njlinux.blogspot.com/ - Google Search
Does this feature even work? If so, what services does it ping?

Promoting Blogger.com Blogs

What’s the best way to get your blog indexed by Google? To find out, I’m going to test the different approaches and compare the results. Right now, I’m going to focus on Blogger.com because:

1. Most of my blogs are hosted there.
2. If you can’t get Google to index their own blog servers, what’s the point?

Adding Your Blog to the Google Index

If your blog isn’t indexed by the search engines, no one will find it unless they know the URL. How do you do it? Here are some recommendations for Blogger.com:

• Adding Google sitemap to blogger.com blog account | Hakuna Matata
• How Do I get Google to Index my blog - How Do I? | Google Groups
• Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta: How to Submit Site to Google?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be testing the different approaches to find which one is most effective, and examining some other methods.

Getting Started - for Free

The best way to learn about blogging is to ... start a blog. I recommend starting with one of these two free popular blogging services:

• Blogger: Create your Blog Now -- FREE. Hosted by Google, Blogger.com is much improved in the last few months, since the Google purchase. You'll need to set up a free Google account, which gives you access to a whole bunch of other tools you'll want to use, anyway.
• WordPress.com » Get a Free Blog Here. Free hosting for blogs running the open source WordPress Blog Tool and Weblog Platform. Just set up a new account and you are off and running.

For a period last year, before Google bought them out, Blogger.com was in a slow death spiral: server performance was so slow and unreliable as to make it almost unusable. Out of frustration, I turned to WordPress and started The StratoPress on WordPress.com. I think WordPress is great, and I'm a big fan of open source software. WordPress was way ahead of Blogger.com when I launched The StratoPress, especially in terms of features and reliability. After Google picked up Blogger.com, they upgraded to a Google-style server farm, and the performance problems disappeared. In addition, overall reliability has improved steadily, if not dramatically. Finally, the Google elves have been hard at work adding new features and closing the gap with WordPress. At this time, although I think that WordPress still has a slight edge on features and interface I'd give the nod to Blogger.com because:

1. You'll want to set up a Google account anyway to use Google's Webmaster Tools and other great Google properties (like Gmail, perhaps).
2. Blogger.com makes it incredibly easy to set up AdSense ads on your blog, a simple first step to start making some scratch from your blog.
3. I suspect that Google may give their blogs on Blogger slightly preferential treatment when indexing -- but I can't prove this.

But, you can't go wrong with either choice. The important thing is to start blogging.

What is a blog?

Blog - Wikipedia:

A blog (a portmanteau of "web log") is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Boing Boing: Blog defined:

Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Neil's Blog about Blogging

All about blogging: tips, how to, getting started, getting noticed, SEO, making money, writing, reviews.