posted
I've become extremely frustrated with Blogger (where I currently have my stitching blog) lately. I also have webspace in two different locations that has been sitting completely untouched except to hold a couple jpg's used on my stitching blog and a coupe web fora. I'd like to build a website for my stitching things, including my blog.
I tried going to download.com to pick out software but I'm completely confused by the technical jargon.
I want something that I can control myself, rather than having an account on a Blogger or LiveJournal (yes I do also have an LJ account, I'll probably leave that one where it is). I want to be able to import my existing blog to my space because I have roughly 2 years worth of posts that I don't want to lose. I would really like to have the ability to send an Atom or RSS feed (because I know I have readers that are subscribed through Bloglines or Blogrolling) but this isn't mission critical. I'd like the ability to post via email. Oh, and free is best if possible.
I'm running WinXP Home on an AMD Athlon machine, roughly 10 gig free on the hard drive, 256M memory, and a broadband connection averaging 3mbps. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
I suggest Blog from Fahim Farook. Okay, the programmer who wrote the thing is my husband, and it's because of this program that we met. I'm sure you can see where the bias comes in.
Having said that, it's free, it sits on your computer, and you use it to publish your blog to your blog site (hence the reasons I downloaded it in the first place). It can import Blogger blogs, but not the version that's currently for download. Email Fahim directly and ask him nicely and maybe he'll give you the latest version which can.
With his program, you have total freedom to design whatever kind of blog template you want - none of that "pick one of twenty" crap. And yes, it has RSS. He also has a forum there where you can ask questions and otherwise get help using the program.
posted
Goody, I use Word Press. I like it very much with exception of the prevelant spam that can happen with the comments.
quid, I've been meaning to try many of the different programs on your husband's site, in particular, nailer, mailcoder and, of course, blog.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Blog can be used with WordPress (again, only the version that he and I are using, but if you ask him nicely, maybe he'll share and/or put it up on his site), and Fahim has anti-spam stuff that works with WordPress as well that's really good at keeping the commenting spam to a bare minimum. I haven't heard him complain about comment spam for, oh, a couple of months now.
Larisse, yeah, he's got some pretty useful stuff there. I use Nailer all the time for my many hundreds of digital photos. He's a pretty useful guy to have around.
Did I mention that he wrote a writer's word processing program for me? Yeah, I could use M$ Word, but what he created can do trees with nodes, it has a notes section, and it's generally just more useful for the way my brain thinks. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I use Movable Type. I actually just fought with my entire site and got most of it running through Movable Type (I had to figure out the templates). I'm fairly pleased with it right now.
I believe Fugu uses WordPress.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've heard good things about Movable Type and WordPress, though I have not used them myself.
LiveJournal lets you embed your journal in your website. I've only tried it for testing purposes and found it a little less intuitive than Blogger. It IS an option, though.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have a LiveJournal blog that I embed in my website, but I'm working on moving everything to WordPress so I can use it as a site content manager as well as a blog.
I still have the LJ, but there's a plugin for WP that lets you post simultaneously to both Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
Make sure you visit the forums for any questions you have. Helpful kind people hang out there and help all the newbies. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I use Wordpress, but I do like MT/Typepad as well. We use Mambo at the office, it's great as a CMS.
Posts: 1281 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just a quick note to say that I have Blog up and running! I've still got some codes to figure out replacements, so the new site doesn't look exactly the same yet, and of course the old posts aren't moved, but it's functional!
posted
Yep, I can see the coding problems. Have you posted on the forums for help yet, if you need it? Fahim's already mentioned that he saw you there.
It looks interesting. I like your choice of color and layout.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I eliminated the blogdescription code entirely, that was one of those semi-required fields in Blogger that I couldn't really come up with a witty answer for anyway, so it's completely gone. I'm still not sure on the archives, but I did post a question about carrying over the old Blogger stuff, and the responses to that question may answer how to deal with the existing archive tags.
I'm now working on creating the rest of the site (www.needleful-things.com if anyone's interested), and I've carried over that same color sceme and layout to the home page, kept my pictures and changed the sidebar some. I may drop the double rainbow on the other pages as I replace what's already there (the layout of which dates back to AOL and their built-in page creator!!)
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Goody, as I mentioned earlier, the ability to bring in the old Blogger entries exists in the beta that Fahim has on his machine but has not released on his site.
Blogger has a problem. It only allows a person to import 20 entries at a time, or perhaps only the last 20 entries, so Fahim's mentioned that he needs to take another look at it to see what's going on.
And I just went to your blog and saw that you already know what's up...
He also made a comment about the template you downloaded from Anthony from his forums. The template you downloaded is CSS, and he's wondering if you'd be better off starting off with the basic template that's included with the program and then modify it using html instead since he noticed that you were having problems with the CSS.
It's all going to depend on your comfort level. personally, I'm a little shaky on CSS myself, but better in html, so with my Blog template, I stick with html. It's easier for me to find problems that I'm having.
Having said that, there are a number of people over on his forums who are helpful, and it looks like you're getting the help you need, so whichever.
posted
I found a post in the Blogger Knowledge dbase that tells you what settings to edit in order to get a single file with every post (up to #999 backdated from current, that is). Unfortunately, I discovered that it does not bring over my headlines, so if I want those, I'll have to go back through the last couple months of archives (to when I started using that field) and manually insert them.
What I end up with is a huge block of unformatted text with periodic "Posted by: <name><date>" to indicate when I've hit the end of a post. I could pull that into Word and do a search and replace function to break the text apart into separate posts. I haven't done the search and replace part yet because I don't know what kind of coding might come up in a future release to make the import work. Better to leave it unadulterated for now. =)
Once that feature is available, I'll be happy to post onto the support board what I've done so far with that part. It was kind of a pain in the patella to find the article I wanted, so I'm sure that more than a few people would appreciate the information direct. Or if he'd like to discuss it while he's still working on the beta, I'd be happy to email. I believe my address is in my Hatrack profile.
(update, Fahim posted over there that he was going to go looking for the information, I gave him the basics of what Bloggers instructions say to do, and offered to send him my exported text if it would help him program)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
whichever.
