Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Well, it hasn’t been too long, has it? Ok, I think I’m finally going to be writing and on a fairly regular basis. At least that’s my feeling right this minute.

Ok, so, after reading more than half of the Blogging book We Blog and visiting umpteen different sites, I finally started getting a handle on the hosting services, publishing services and various components and tools. I still probably know only 5% of what I should, but I think I have the basic important things down. I was trying to first decide whether I should go with a hosting service like Blogger or try one of those installed scripting deals like Moveable Type. But Moveable Type is, from what I heard, a pain to set up. It has a gazillion features, which is great, but that can also be overwhelming for a newbie blogger like myself. Looking at hosting services, everything was pointing towards Blogger. It is the biggest, most popular one out there as far as I can tell (well, maybe Radio Userland and Livejournal come close?), and it seemed to have a good set of features. But it also had some issues. If I wanted to upgrade to no ads, I would have to get blog*spot plus, or get a hosting account elsewhere. This was on top of the fee to go with Blogger Pro, which has all the nice features. Then you have the third party components like comment systems which can cost yet more money, and make it so that some of your data (the blogs) are kept in one place, and others (comments) are kept elsewhere. Not very elegent. I was all set to say screw it and just deal with some of the issues I didn’t like, but then I couldn’t even upgrade to Blogger Pro. Blogger has been working on a new version called Dano which is supposed to work out some of the bugs in the system as well as add some new features. But it didn’t seem like the new features were all that numerous or significant. If one creates a Basic Blogger blog now, it comes out in the new version, but the one that I created last year is still in the old version and they are supposed to be transitioning them at some point soon. But there is no way to upgrade your account to Pro right now. The part that got me frustrated was that I simply couldn’t get any answers. There are a couple of Yahoo Groups that I posted questions to without any response and Pyra, the makers of Blogger, just seem to busy to even update their status - nothing’s been posted for a couple of weeks now. You can’t even get any info about what Blogger Pro offers of Blogger Basic because they kind of disabled the whole help system no doubt in order to update it for their new version.

And then I came accross this new host which basically offers everything I need or want in a weblog host. I won’t go into everything they offer, but you can check them out for yourself. They are called Blog City. They look like a solid company and there product so far has really impressed me. I will probably upgrade to their paid version really soon to get rid of the ads and gain a whole bunch of new features. Ok, let me offer some of the things that impressed me enough to clinch it. First, they offer a backup system that lets you save all your old content (and comments) to a file that you could then use to rebuild it at a later date for whatever reason. You have the ability not only to email your blog up, but to attach photos to it as well if you have a phone with a camera, for example. Comments are built in to the system, so you don’t have to go searching for third-party solutions. They also have a bunch of other tools like polls, chat, a discussion board of sorts, etc. There’s basically two price teirs - free and paid ($27.50/year). No additional fees for one tool or another, etc. Just that one fee and you have a ton of stuff at your fingers. I guess I am starting to sound like an ad, so I’ll stop, but I was so impressed, I set this blog up that you are reading right now, and was able to do something else that really impressed me as well - take the few posts that I had made to Blogger (basically every one before this one) and post them here with their original dates! Maybe I am too easily impressed and most or all of these things are available on some other hosting platforms and this is just the first one I came accross. But it works great and it seems like the company is on top of things, updating stuff regularly, helping users with some great info, etc.