In my last post, I talked about the different types of templates and what they’re used for. Now that we have a feel for what our templates do, let’s take a closer look at one and see what’s going on inside. [Read more…]
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A Great Example Of Integrated Tweets
You know Twitter, that lovely microblogging service that Gapingvoid just left because he didn’t do much more than, well twittered? The same service that Robert Scoble heralds, and Jason Calacanis is aiming to dominate? Yes, that Twitter, the same Twitter that I’m on, and sharing space with the British government.
Since Twitter is addictive, lots of bloggers have decided to start importing Twitter content into their blogs. It’s nothing new, with several plugins available, the most popular one might be Alex King’s Twitter Tools, but I don’t know for sure. Either way, it’s a sure way to make your blog totally uninteresting, ugly, and boring. Think about it, who wants to read your tweets in a bullet list, hours after they happened? Chances are, most people don’t want to read them at all, especially when you’re offering a discussion with some friends, interesting only to those involved, but nevertheless cluttering your blog in a most hideous manner. Don’t take that last link to seriously by the way, Jeremy came to his senses…
Still, your tweets are content, and maybe you want to attract the people who actually do care about what you have to say on Twitter to your account. Then integrate it smoothly, like Twisted Intellect, the most beautiful example of displaying tweets on a site to date:
Pretty huh? I’m sure there are several others who’s doing this right as well, but I was actually quite blown away by this today. I’m a fan of serifs though, especially classy work with italics, so the site pretty much appeals to me.
The Rules of Twitter on Your Blog
Follow these rules when integrating Twitter on your blog or site, and you’ll be fine.
- Don’t treat tweets as regular content! Put them someplace to the side, by themselves. Posts are content, tweets are, well, tweets.
- Don’t give your tweets too much space! Think about it, does they really add that much to your blog to begin with? Shouldn’t you push your real content with that space instead?
- Don’t show too many tweets! Really, how interesting are they after a while? Better to show just a handful, than to push out a RSS feed from your Twitter account containing 10 tweets, where 7 are from days past.
- Don’t integrate Twitter unless you use it! What’s the point of displaying your tweets if they are not up to date? I’ll tell you right now, there is none.
Ready to follow that? OK, then please, please, please ask yourself yet again if your tweets actually add value to your blog. Maybe a link to your account is good enough? Chances are, for most of us, it is.
Have you seen other great integrations of Twitter content on sites and blogs? What’s your take on all this? Tell us in the comments, I know I’m dying to know.
What bbPress Needs To Really Work
I’m a dedicated WordPress user, and I know the system if not inside out so good enough to do more or less anything I want with it. That means I’m pretty psyched about the bbPress forum software, AJ’s written about it previously, the popular guide post. That was a while ago, October 2006 actually, but I’d say it still works out if you want to give bbPress a go. It might be a bit easier and polished today, but not much.
bbPress is still a bit from 1.0. Quite a bit, honestly. While I do think a forum system should be pretty slimmed down, not including everything I don’t need (but offering it as great kickass plugins), there are some things that bbPress lacks that just have to be in there.
- Subscribe to updates. There is a RSS option, but I want an e-mail digest as well, telling me when someone posted in the thread I’m interested in.
- Individual forum access. Sometimes you want locked forums, so why not let me set access on a per user basis? Or, failing that, for groups of users at least? And please let me have users in several groups, thank you very much. (Need private forums today? There’s a plugin, at least, although it is a bit lacking.)
- User bling-bling. At least some bling… You know, avatars, signatures, those kind of things. Actually, those two would get bbPress a long way. Not being able to set up a signature even, that’s pretty weak if you ask me.
bbPress is still a bit from 1.0. Quite a bit, honestly.
One could also argue that bbPress needs more themes and plugins, since although there is quite a bunch of the latter, they aren’t really as refined as you’d think they would be, it being a sister project to WordPress and all. Also, the presentation is miles behind, especially now when WordPress is in 2.5 and sports a brand new look.
bbPress is in version 0.8.3.1 at the moment. While they say it’s not quite ready yet – obviously – I’d say it is pretty stable. I’m using it for some closed groups at least, but that’s about it.
Well, there are plans now, so I need to decide if bbPress is ready. In my opinion, it works, but it doesn’t work as well as it should.
What do you think? Is bbPress ready for a live site?
Your Online Life As Content
Today we’ve got a bunch of great services online, some blog related, others just tools that help us in our everyday life. If we really wanted to, we could have more or less everything accessible, or at least replaced, by online tools and services. Think about it: e-mail and calendars have already moved online permanently for a lot of people, and nowadays the office apps are getting decent, you’ve got collaboration software, and even an online version of Photoshop! Add your bookmarks, web radio and music, online movies and TV, there’s a lot.
Why not share it? And give your site more life and flair at the same time?
Share Your Life
That way, colleagues and friend can keep up with your schedule, and you can link it easily.
If you’re using Google Calendar, and have public content in it, you can add it to your site using simple embed code. That way, colleagues and friend can keep up with your schedule, and you can link it easily. Other online calendars, including applications you install yourself, will probably let you do this as well, but my 100% non-scientific research shows that the Google app is the most used one.
Likewise, you can help people find you in the physical world, using Google Maps for instance. That way, driving directions are always available online, with zooming functionality and everything. Embed a map including important places on your blog, maybe with restaurant tips and directions to good bars? Or just get a map showing where your offices are located, either way will do. You can even do stuff with the street view these days!
Add Your Online Existence
I personally advise against displaying microblogging content as regular content
Do you Twitter or Jaiku, or perhaps Pownce? Why not share that content on your site? Bloggers can use one of the numerous plugins available, including the popular Twitter Tools for WordPress, although I personally advise against displaying microblogging content as regular content. It’s better to put one of the available badges (for Twitter and Jaiku) in the sidebar, showing your current status, or why not just pull the latest updates via RSS? Better yet, mash them up with Yahoo Pipes and serve your microblogging content live, using RSS.
Bookmarks are great, and you should share your finds. The most popular way to store bookmarks online today is del.icio.us, and you can of course get your latest additions for your site, or pull it with a plugin or via RSS. The latter goes for all good online bookmarking services.
Speaking of RSS, why not share your list with everyone? Either just link to the OPML file, which can be imported into any good RSS reader, or to a public showing. Google Reader users can display a clip of their shared items on their blogs, or just link the public page. If you’re a Bloglines user, you can create your own blogroll badge, or you can link to a public page there as well. I’m sure other online RSS readers have similar solutions.
My Leisure Time
Why not share what your do on your free time, for leisure? Using last.fm, you can tell everyone what you’re listening to, and even display it with a nifty little widget. Or why not start your own last.fm music channel, playing good music only? If you, like me, are in the Spotify beta, you can link your playlist, which is more or less the same as last.fm but cooler, and only for us privileged ones…!
We all love YouTube, so why not slip in a link to your YouTube favorites, or even a playlist? There are several ways to get YouTube on your site. Sure, you can always post the videos you like on your site, but that’s not always appropriate, and besides, if you’re an avid YouTube watcher then it would men a ridiculous amount of YouTube videos, right? Link your channel!
What about Hulu, South Park Studios, Comedy Central and such? Well, they just don’t offer anything besides embedding videos, and sometimes not even that. But you can always link your favorite shows, right?
What About Privacy?
Be sure to consider the privacy aspect of sharing your online life carefully
Obviously, there are numerous ways to let people into your online life. The question is, do you want to do that with everything? Maybe your bookmarks are private, or perhaps you don’t want to share your schedule with everyone? Also, do you want to let people know where to find you in the physical world?
Ask yourself these questions. You certainly shouldn’t share anything online that matters a lot to you, because it could get exploited and leave you in a fix in the future. Be sure to consider the privacy aspect of sharing your online life carefully, before starting to embed and share content from these great web services (and others) on your site.
That being said, it is certainly nice to get automatic content for your blog, for instance, just by using a service you would be utilizing anyway!
Blogging Software for Mac Users
If you like me are sometimes updating multiple blogs, then you know how annoying it is to jump between admins. I’m a WordPress user myself, but I could find myself using other platforms, which would further add clutter to my workflow. I don’t like clutter one bit.
Enter blogging software, programs that let you post to several blogs (or just one, should you want to do that) using one interface. This post focuses on blogging software for Mac.
The good and the bad
There are both pros and cons with using blogging software for your everyday blog posting. Some might seem a bit over the top, but assuming you take pride in your blog, and perhaps make money maintaining it, I think these issues are important.
Pros:
- Easy to manage several blogs.
- Offline writing, often including drafts.
Cons:
- Uncertainty. Did it really work?
- General program design means that it might not be optimized for your blogging platform of choice.
- Blog platform updates might break your blogging program’s functionality.
- If you’re doing custom stuff, like fields or cool plugins, you’re stuck with your blog platform’s admin.
That being said, here goes!
MarsEdit
MarsEdit’s been around for a while. It costs $29.95 and there’s a 30-day trial available. This isn’t the program for people using the WYSIWYG editor in their blogging platform of choice, since there’s nothing of that here. What you have is a simple dropdown that lets you input standard tags (strong, link tags, blockquote, and so on), much like the traditional editor in WordPress. This might not be enough for everyone, but personally I find it doing its job, then again I always turn of the visual editor since I speak html fluently.
A good thing is that you can setup your own templates for previewing posts, and you can also store macros so that you don’t have to type the same thing over and over again, a good feature. There’s also support for AppleScript, but I don’t know much about that.
Uploading images is easy, and should you be the type who likes to nab photos from Flickr, then you can have your account integrated into the MarsEdit Media manager.
As for compatibility, MarsEdit works with most blogging platforms, be it WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger, Vox, or even Drupal. Tagging is supported.
I did find one annoying bug, or whatever you want to call it, though. When writing posts that you want to split up using the more feature (we’re talking WordPress again), then you type in two different boxes (Body and Extended). Everything in the Extended box is after the more link. However, the more link will be inserted on its own row, and not directly after the last character in the Body box, which makes it look a bit weird on sites where the read more link is designed to just follow the content.
Overall MarsEdit is a great choice, as long as you know your html. I do, so I love it!
Ecto
Ecto is the most stylish blogging program that I’m writing about in this post. It costs $17,95, and there’s a 21-day trial available so that you can play around for yourself. At the moment, only Ecto 3 beta supports Leopard, but on the other hand the beta is stable so you can play around with it.
Unfortunately, Ecto’s got a reputation of having problems with WordPress, although it’s mostly something for the version 2 branch. There are some weirdness in Ecto 3 as well, most importantly the fact that you can’t add new categories in the program. Tagging works though. This might be something that will work once Ecto 3 leaves beta, but right now it’s buggy.
One selling point for Ecto is that it looks good, and it’s got a visual editor, as opposed to MarsEdit’s html code one. You can swap between visual and code in an instant, and Ecto doesn’t seem to output too much unnecessary code, if any in the simpler cases. Certainly a good thing.
Ecto works with more or less any blogging platform, just like MarsEdit. There’s support for AppleScript, and there’s also a few plugins available, including a Flickr one, and support for posting tweets to Twitter. That’s really cool.
However, although Ecto looks a bit better than MarsEdit, I think it falls short. Keep in mind that I’m not interested in the visual editor, though, so you might prefer this one after all. Beta is never a good thing, but I believe Ecto will deliver in the end.
Blogo
Blogo is a newcomer, costing $25 and offering a 21-day trial. It’s got a very straight forward design, not exactly leaning on the OS X look, if you know what I mean. Either you like it, or you don’t. I’m fine with it. The full screen mode, more or less doing the same thing as the popular WriteRoom application, is genius!
However, Blogo fails on a very crucial aspect, and that’s categorization of your posts. You’ve got no category nor tag management, and while you can add tags in the “categories” box below the body, you’ll find that, with wordpress.com blogs, these will be saved as tags. This is not acceptable, and I do hope that it will be remedied and then remade for a future version.
There are good things in Blogo for sure, especially the image manager which let you crop and position images with ease. Drag and drop is very nice when it’s working. The fact that Blogo isn’t giving you tons of options when writing isn’t always a good thing, but it sure makes you focus on the important thing, being the content. However, a handy code editor would’ve been nice.
I’ll be keeping an eye on Blogo, and if you like the straight forward style you should too.
Final words
My trial periods have expired, and I’m hooked. The most expensive blog software, MarsEdit, is also the one I’ve decided to go with in the long run. I realize it’s not for everyone, and there are flaws (which I’ll point out to the developers of course), but it certainly saves me time. I’m fluent in html and css though, so this might not be the obvious solution for everybody.
Make good use of the trial periods offered, and do share what your blogging software you’re using for the Mac.
