So in my last post, Essentials for Blogging, I mentioned some tools that you as a blogger could use effectively to overcome the limitations of your particular hosting platform. Through a combination of tools, you could optimize your blogging experience and make your blog better looking, easily accessible, noticed and promoted. Executed properly, you can achieve results that far exceed the results of a single hosting platform. Users who have dedicated blogging platforms, even those who have dedicated hosting services do sometimes use these tools to effectively monetize or popularize. In the end, readers not only get a far better experience, they also remember the difference your blog makes. As they say content is king. Once someone reads your content, you are sure he will bookmark you and return to your blog again and again like a dedicated worshipper. But why will he look at your blog, if he doesn't even notice it. If you are not able to reach the reader, whatever you write is only for you to see.
So, you have to make your blog noticeable, reachable, provide that extra something which other bloggers don't. And you have to know your readers.
All these to work, you will need tools/services, which at present are not offered by any blogging platform. If they offer some features, then they miss out on the others.
Do not worry. Learn to integrate and disintegrate. In this post I will try to list tools/services which you as a blogger will find very useful. Among these tools are :
Blog Host : A place where the blog will be hosted. There are many blog hosts all over the net. All of them offer various services. Some for free, some free to try, and some paid.
Image Hosts : A picture is worth a thousand words. And most of the Blog hosts do not offer a decent picture storage facility.
Hit Counters : Did anyone read your blog? Who read your blog? Where do they come from? When do they read your blog? How many times did someone check out your blog? Which of your posts did they read? What search terms did they use? Which link did they follow? The answer to all these questions is a Hit counter.
Syndication : XML? RSS? ATOM? Which type of feed does your blog use? Your RSS Reader cannot read ATOM? Get them converted.
Mailing list : Let your users subscribe through their email. Send them new posts by email. Keep them informed of new posts.
File Storage : So you recorded your sweet baby’s first footsteps and want the world to see? Did you say it was 100mb? And you can’t email such a big file? Use free hosting service to upload your files and let the world watch the next superstar take the first step to glory.
Feed Readers : You have to have a decent feed reader. Why? To read what others are writing about. Everybody blogs. And if you read other people’s blog, and comment on it. They and their readers will come and check out your blog.
Though, right now I can’t think of anything else, I am sure there are many more tools and services which a blogger can effectively use to his/her advantage.
To get the ball rolling, lets see the contenders for the Blog Host category.
Wordpress: You can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this
sentence. All you need is an email address. You’ll get your own
WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), 3 gigabytes
of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great
features listed here. You can blog as much as you want for free, your
blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends.
Blogger : With its unique brand name, with the might of Google, its become one of the biggest blog hosting platform. Not only it allows you to host multiple blogs, it has recently started allowing photos to be hosted at blogger too. With 31 templates to choose from, a blogger can create a personal identity. With the knowledge of CSS and HTML, any one can make a new template. Now with Google Adsense integration, its more bang for the buck
LiveJournal - Website and client software for maintaining an online journal/weblog and keep track of friends journals. Boasting a total of more than 9 million users, a user can join for free. Though, there are many account upgrades possible, if you feel like shelling out $3 p.m. Free users cannot completely customize their blog. They can post only 6 pictures, compared to 15 for upgraded users. An upgraded user also gets a subdomain like username.livejournal.com
Yahoo 360° - Create your own place online. Share photos. Create a blog. List your favorites, send a blast, and more. Blogs, Photos, Friends, LAUNCHcast, Lists, Groups! Even I am not sure what Yahoo 360 wants to be.
Xanga - Xanga is obsessed with one thing: helping people publish content to the web. As a free user you get 200MB of photo storage, while premium users get 2GB. A premium user also gets to post 99 profile pictures. Whew! A premium user can also download their blogs. If you can afford $4 p.m., then go for it.
I am sure this is not an exhaustive list. Do inform me of others worth mentioning.
Up next on the list are Image Hosts :
ImageShack® - provides free web hosting for images with direct linking allowed (hotlinking). It can be used to share pictures with friends, post images on message boards. It can also be used to direct link images from your personal website or eBay auction. No signup required. Powered by highly reliable Linux dedicated server network. Limitations: File size limit 1024 KB; File types allowed: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, swf (Flash); Images that have not been accessed in over a year will be deleted.
Photobucket.com - is a free image hosting company for ebay, online auctions, classifieds, message boards, blogs, live journals, and online photo albums. You can easily upload, categorize, add titles and delete images as needed. Direct linking is allowed. You can upload up to 20 pictures at once. Photos larger than 512 KB are automatically scaled down. Limitations: 50 MB storage space; 2500 MB/month bandwidth; 512 KB file size limit; Extensions allowed: .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .swf (Flash files); Images must not contain any weird characters (numbers and letters only). The uploader converts bmp and tif to jpg. You can view the most recently uploaded pictures.
PicsPlace.to - offers free web hosting of photo pictures, image files, and Macromedia Flash file format. No signup required, and Hotlinking allowed (direct linking of uploaded images). Can be used for ebay auctions, posting images on message boards, your personal web site or wherever you want. Your pics are freely hosted on a fast dedicated server. Supports free webhosting of JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP and SWF files up to 1.5 MB; No diskspace or bandwidth limitations; Inactive files will not be deleted from their server.
4FreeImageHost - allow images of up to 500K picture file in either jpg, jpeg, gif or png format. Hotlinking is allowed. Signing up is not required to upload pics, but you can choose to register and create a free image hosting account so you can manage your uploaded images. Registered users can also get the code for their images again or delete them. Their service can be used with message boards, eBay auction listings, blogs, etc. Their server will keep images online at least 60 days.
