Set of questions/asnwers about weblogging tools.
Question 3. Weblogging tools
Responses to the Question 14. What do you like about the weblogging tools
- Easy (install, use), comprehensive, clear
- Easy customisation, templates
- Editing (easy formatting, drafts, off-line editing)
- Connectivity (RSS, Referrers integrated, pinging weblogs.com, trackback, comments, discussion tools, Friends in LJ, e-mail notification)
- Integration (Combination of RSS/news aggregator/blogging in one, one step posting, many functions are embedded, works as CMS)
- Web-based, accessible from any place
- Opportunities to expand, large and open developer community
- Free
- Routing content into categories, liveTopics
- Database/ doesn’t need a database
- Storage (hosting included, light weight)
- Improves other things (save time, takes away hard work and allows concentration on writing, motivates learning)
Would be bloggers
- Most of would be bloggers are not sure because of lack of experiences, some believe that blogging tools are easy to use.
- Other suggestions:
- Use of metadata
- Ability to strip-off graphics when reading via RSS reader
- Those characteristics that mentioned by both bloggers and would be bloggers are marked with *
- Lack of support (bad documentation, instructions are not suitable for non-tech user, difficulties in reaching tech support)*
- Customisation is difficult (including: not suitable for educational purposes, “things I want to do are beyond the scope of the tools”, templates/HTML problems)
- Lack of reliability (bugs and problems with fixing them, server problems)
- Lack of control over data (poor support for exporting, backups are difficult/impossible, archives do not work)
- Usability&complexity (tool is not obvious, too complicated for normal users, difficult to set up and maintain)
- Formatting problems (difficult to format, lack of power editing features, need MS Word integration)*
- Lack of specific features (no TrackBack, no RSS, no access from different computers, lack of deep media object suport)
- Other (slow, requires MSQL which is costly)
- Problems are opportunities for learning *
Only would be bloggers
- Blogging would require technical expertise (or at least some knowledge about them) and/or time to learn
- Hosting-related issues (good communication with ISP, owning private server, firewall problems)
- Finding tools
- Speculation around and lack of stability of tools (“everybody and their scripting languages seems to have a blogging tool or twelve”)
My conclusions in brief:
- Half of would be bloggers don’t know or not planning using RSS feeds and news aggregators.
- Blogging tools are easy.
- Blogging tools are not easy for everyone, especially when it comes to customisation. As one of the respondents says, “Drama! There is a lot of drama surrounding blogging” :)
- “Would be bloggers” are not aware of many technical problems, but it seems that their expectation that technical expertise is required are right.
- The results of questions 13 and 14 are controversial, so I’ll try to relate the answers to the level of technical skills of respondents.
Tags: blog tools, BlogTalk paperArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/05/01.html#a572; comments are here.
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