In the past, when my internet connection was dial up (well, sometimes now, it seems to crawl like dial up), I liked to write my blog posts offline. I have found/used a few and thought I’d share them…..

Qumana

I used to write offline posts with Qumana.  It’s cool and served the purpose, but well, it wasn’t all that spiffy to use (of course they may have improved it since I last used it).  If you have a blog that you can add ads, to, you can add ads via Qumana.

Scribe Fire

Earlier this year, I started using ScribeFire, a FireFox add on for writing blog posts outside of your blog provider’s interface. When you activate it in your web browser, it cuts your web page in half and reveals a little writing area.  Once you add your blog details in and connect it  with your blog, then your categories, recent entries, etc. are available for all new posts. You can easily add You Tube videos, pictures, change fonts, and really lots of other cool things (as well as monetize, again if your blog provider allows this). You can save your post draft as a note.

Well, ScribeFire is nifty, but I haven’t used it that often (I keep forgetting). Then I downloaded ……..

Windows Live Writer

Love It!

In fact, I’m writing this post with it right now!

With Windows Live Writer, you can do all the things that I mentioned above, but to me the interface is nicer and more intuitive if you are used to using Office/Windows products.  You can easily add pictures from your computer (takes less time to add a picture via Live Write than it does for me to add one on my WP dashboard).  Plug ins can be added on so that you can insert files (but it already comes with several plug ins like tables, photo album and pics). You can also schedule posts…….

A few other nifties….. you can access your blog’s dashboard very easily from within Windows Live Writer. When Windows Live Writer, sets up your blog, it gets details to provide a writing interface that mimics your blog (e.g. the window I type in, the typing area is equal to the with of my blog’s main content area.  You can save your drafts to your computer and it can also retrieve posts from your blog.

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If you are looking for offline blogging software (and of course all are FREE), use the links above to check them out.

What do you use?

Do you use offline blogging software? If so, which one?

Ok so something I was reading about recently is Microsoft currently encouraging the use of their “Windows Live” set of tools, especially with the introduction of Windows 7. So I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at them and this is basically me having a play around with Windows Live Writer.

So far I am liking the idea of having a piece of software on my machine that allows me to gradually write blog posts and save them locally before publishing them to the web. Setting up the blog was extremely easy. All I had to do was enter the web address, username and password and it did the rest in about 15 seconds. It also makes it easier to add rich content to blog posts. There is a button in the top left corner for publishing the post, and on the right there is a control panel that provides me with links to my blog and the dashboard for my blog and some shortcuts for inserting rich content like videos, maps etc. I also like the Microsoft Office style spell checker, as I often forget to spell check when I’m writing blog posts via the web interface. Picking a category, adding a new category and adding tags are also just as easy to do as they are on the web.

I also like that you have the Macromedia (or Adobe now!) style “Edit/Preview/Source” tabs. The “Edit” view is what I’m currently writing this in. It gives you a little page, but the font, size and area to type in is the same as it will appear on your blog. The “Preview” view shows you exactly what it will look like on your blog. The “Source” view is the HTML code behind what you are seeing on screen. The only thing that I’ve noticed on first go is that there is no way to highlight selected text and format it as code. This is obviously something I use a lot. Although on the toolbar you are given a drop down box listing different styles allowed on your blog “theme” such as “Paragraph” or “Heading1”, “Code” is not present in this list. It is however possible to go into source view and use the <code></code> HTML tags. This isn’t a deal breaker in my opinion. It just would have been nice to have had it in the toolbar with the other styles, or even a button that would do the formatting. Who knows, I might find something, I have only just opened this piece of software for the first time!

So all in all, I like it so far and will probably continue using it for a while and see if I continue to like it!

(Updated with additional info @ 2:11 p.m. 9/23/09)

To say Matt Mullenweg loves WordPress is to state the obvious.

Mullenweg created the widely used blogging software and runs Automattic, the San Francisco company that offers it as a free platform or a software app you can use to run a self-hosted blog. (Disclaimer: I use WordPress.com for this blog.)

Mullenweg was in Portland last weekend to spread some of that WordPress love around at WordCampPortland, one of many conferences for WordPress disciples that’s cropped around the country in the past few years.

Work obligations kept me from going in person. But I listened to Mullenweg over a live stream that WordCampPortland organizers set up so anybody could feel like they were part of the party no matter where they were – except for the beer. Unfortunately nobody’s managed to live stream a keg, but given enough time I’m sure Portland’s developer community will figure it out one day. But I digress. As of Sept. 22, WordCampPortland organizer Aaron Hockley was still working on getting a recording of Mullenweg’s talk and the rest of the live stream online. Check here for more info.

Mullenweg, 25, has obviously talked about WordPress a million times because he’s one smooth presenter. In fact, if you followed my tweets at #wcpdx, you probably read me say Matt Mullenweg is the Justin Timberlake of blogging: funny, smart, cute and a natural in front of a crowd. Again, I digress.

In an extended Q&A session with the WordPress faithful at the two-day meeting, Mullenweg touched on a number of issues of interest to writers who blog and bloggers who write. Here’s a quick summary:

Blogs as websites – More people are using blogging software such as WordPress as a content management system. That’s a fancy way of saying they’re using a blog as a Website. When Mullenweg asked for a show of hands, about 90 percent of the people at WordCampPortland indicated that’s how they use WordPress. The number of freelance writers using blogs as websites might not be as high, but my guess is it’s large and growing. Here’s an example of what a blog doubling as a Website could look like, this brochure site for pianist Jane Coop.

Word and WordPress – I write posts in the editor built into WordPress.com. It works for me. But I know other writer-bloggers who prefer Microsoft Live Writer or another editor. I didn’t realize until Mullenweg mentioned it that it’s also possible to write posts in Word. Possible, but messy – unless you use a tool on the WordPress editor to delete a lot of extraneous code Word adds when you copy and paste text into the WordPress.com editor. You’ll find instructions explaining how to fix that in a post on the WordPress.com Support forum called Microsoft Word. Thanks to fellow freelance writer @JaneLangille for finding that and sharing it with me.

One-button upgrades – With a little coding, it’s possible to upgrade your self-hosted WordPress blog to the newest version of the software with a touch of a button. True confessions: I didn’t take notes fast enough on this topic. If there’s anyone out there reading this who caught this part of Mullenweg’s presentation or knows more about this, please leave a comment and I’ll update this portion of the post with the info. Update: The latest version of the WordPress.org software allows for one-click upgrades. See explanation from @verso below.

You can hear from Mullenweg on WordPress and related subjects in an interview he did on the local Strange Love Live podcast radio show between WordCampPortland sessions.

Never been to a WordCamp? You can read first-hand accounts of two people’s experiences here and here (caution, technical language ahead), then check out WordCamp Central’s upcoming events to check if there’s one scheduled for your area soon, or here to organize your own.

You’ll probably see more from me about WordPress in coming weeks as I move this site from the free WordPress.com service to the hosted WordPress.org service. Actually, I’ve hired someone else to do the heavy lifting – thanks Ron! – but I’ll be doing a fair amount of work as well. Cleaner design, same content.

Got your own WordPress love story? Do share.

Anyone would have trouble coining a phrase that as of today has over 600 million Google hits.  Nevertheless, my title remains a salient question to be asked by any budding writer in the 21^st century, or one just catching up to the end of the 20^th.

I remember the first time I was introduced to the phrase ‘weblog’ in undergrad.  It was by an English student who was on top of all things technological, something I hadn’t managed to do since public school.   Since then, I’ve always toyed with the idea but could never get around to doing it.  It certainly wasn’t for lack of time.  Looking back, if I’d only blocked Freetetris.org from my computer, I’m sure I would be king among bloggers by now.  Come to think of it, if I’d only blocked Tetris three or four years ago, I’d probably have a degree in chemical engineering or theoretical physics.

It will be said by the luddites that the internet only fragments opinion.  What it actually does is increase the potential for a diverse set of opinions to reach an audience.  To be sure, there will be falsehood and slander, all of the joys that come with opinions or beliefs.  But proportionally speaking, there is no less crap on the internet than has been bound into book, or put onto the silver screen.

(Although if it is crap you’re after, here’s a link to my friend Remi’s site.)

From an epistemological point of view, we are not going to reach a desirable objectivity by relying on large, privately-owned and increasingly centralized news corporations, any more than we are by listening to state sponsored media.  The age of the Imperial Encyclopaedia is long since gone.

Having evolved to become a radically potent force in media, blogs are just about the only semblance of democracy we have in our so-called ‘democratic’ society.  We see the power of the internet, the blog and the ubiquitous camera recently on such disparate places as the streets of Tehran, as well as the town hall meetings of Main Street, USA.

Let us not fear, stifle, or deny the marketplace of ideas.  Let us embrace this democratic technology as one of the few potent weapons in our arsenal against dogma, superstition and illegitimate authority.

We’re in this together, kids.  I’ll get back to writing…after this quick game of Tetris.

Since 2002, I have used 5 different types of blog software.  My initial reason to start a weblog was to have an on-line, personal [and private] diary, so I choose greymatter.  It was a giant perl CGI script and had some limitations.

Here’s the rest of the tools:

phpweblog
b2evolution
blogger
WordPress

At the turn of this century, I was still actively writing software and so maintaining my own installations of blog software was no big deal.  I had the time and spent many late nights hacking ‘in the cave’ [our basement] as my lovely wife put it.

After we had our first child, I moved into management at work and my time for hacking is almost nil.  It became harder to maintain b2evolution since I had been customizing templates and dust started to settle into my blog.

In 2004, I sung the praises of ACSite.net; a cheap php web hosting company.  I was happy with them for the next 4 years … until they summarily turned off my hosting account, despite my attempts to contact their support.

I thought my 400+ posts contained on my ACSite.net account were gone.  I was bummed but in January of 2008, I figured it was time for me to move to a hosted account.  I  lamented the loss of approximately 115,000 words.

In the 6 months , the longtime editor at my ‘other’ writing gig at American Soccer News left and was replaced by web 2.0 guru Nate.  Nate promptly scrapped our 1990’s era look and publication model with WordPress.

I became more annoyed with blogger’s limitations and saw that WordPress was cool enough and wordpress.com would allow hosting and [like blogger] accepts URL redirects.

About a year ago, I received a random email from my dead ACSite.net account.  I logged into it for the first time in months – previously the connection into my dashboard was dead.  I quickly accessed my b2evolution MySQL database and exported the posts table.

This was the only table I could get before the access window closed.

This export file sat on my desktop for the next year, daring me to schedule time to figure out how to import it into WordPress and restore my full blog history to isuma.

I finally got around to it this past week.  I had to dust off my perl and vim brain cells.  Both were 95% intact, save the few odd commands like:

:%s/TITLE:\(.*\)/TITLE:\1^MAUTHOR: jeff
:%g/^<P>/-1join

The most time took to assign new categories since I was unable to dump the b2evolution category table.

I also learned interesting details about the Movable Type import format.  So after about 6 hours of goofing around in vim, one support email, and one forum post, I imported about 400 posts.

It was enjoyable to read through the posts and think back to my state of mind when I wrote each posts.  I still have some author issues.  I also noticed that many of the embedded images are broken.  The archive posts have no tags, I am missing comments [but can get many of them from the waybackmachine and my blogroll is toast.  Other than that, I am golden!

Given the time we have waiting on the org changes at work, I may get these things fixed sooner than later

What are you posting with these days?

WordPress, the word no one can forget are mistake as it is an essential thing being used by netizens and bloggers. If you want to use a theme for WordPress you have to pay some hundred of dollars. Nevertheless, here Devine lets you create your own free themes in a click. Device is a free plugin that lets you convert any Photoshop PSD design to well coded WordPress theme.
If you want to use this method,
•Download and install the Plugin Devine.
•Then open your PSD design in Photoshop.
•Then go to Devine in menu bar and publish.
•Assign WordPress elements in your theme.
•Then upload your theme to look the preview.

Click to know about Two Column Theme for Bloggers

Detail steps explained below :
Minimal system requirements:
Divine 0.5.0 version was developed as the plug-in for the popular editor Photoshop.
This is why minimal system requirements straightly depend on your Photoshop version’s requirements.
Step 1
Launch your Photoshop editor. (We have Version CS3). As you can see, Divine item has appeared in the editor menu.

Step 2
Open template ( Click to Download )

Step 3
After the template is loaded, launch the Divine plug-in.

Step 4
Next, we must assign the main roles to our template’s elements. Creating the elements blank parts of the template in advance and assigning roles to them, you assign the styles to all those elements at the same time.

Step 5
Additional elements assigning. To create a valid page you’ll need additional elements besides the main ones. To do that, highlight required elements and assign UserItem roles to them. After that we can assign links to them and change their ID.

Step 6
New theme creation and publication. After we assigned all necessary roles to the elements, we can set to creating a theme. All we need to do that is press Publish. And if your account is set correctly, the theme will at once be uploaded.
(See detailed instruction on profile settings in the chapter Documentation. Interface. Menu)

Step 7
Activate your theme and enjoy the result. After short and easy work we see the result.

[ More ]

Another catch with these free of charge blogging accounts is with the purpose of the blogging service has the power to completely terminate your blog. For paradigm, if the blogging service went elsewhere of selling, you’d lose your complete blog. You’d at that time engage in to start all greater than again.

If you really plan a free of charge blogging story, on slightest become your own domain refer to. This is the finest portion of advice I can perform you. Register a domain refer to with ZappyHost, and you’ll become a free of charge blogging story.
* Self-installation: Sign up with a hosting supplier (such as ZappyHost), download blogging software (also celebrated as “blogware”) such as WordPress (downloadable version) or Movable Type, at that time install the software on top of the attendant. You will plus need to register your own domain refer to with your hosting story.
* Pre-installed (no installation needed): In the role of mentioned, this is a hosting story with the purpose of already includes a blog. Similar to the “self-installation” option, however, in attendance is veto need used for the blogger to download some software.

Business blog software is a central part to lead generation on the web, and now you can take a free lead generation course to find out how to put business blogging and lead capture tools together for maximum impact.

The free lead generation course is a series of videos that will take you step by step through the process of analyzing your market and setting up a publishing site using blogging software and capturing leads in tools that are designed to do just that.

Previously, and now for some time, I have been using ‘iblog’ in conjunction with .Mac web space to maintain my blog. Being located in one place most of the time meant that I liked the consistency of this arrangement. A few days ago, since upgrading my operating system, the upload process seemed to only partially complete. What bothered me most was that the files (images and text) were very difficult to unpack and reassemble; it was very complex to track which files were missing. It has ultimately been quicker to start again. Like many things, what initially seemed to be a stress has played out rather well.  The use of word press will allow me to make entries from multiple locations, unlike the previous configuration.  The search, category and control facilities are improved and the move has caused me to back up material (which otherwise I am not great at doing). I will now gradually migrate content access from the old blog. Apologies to those who need to change their RSS.

One thing you will want to make sure your business blog software does is that it makes a great looking profile for your authors.

Business Blogs can help readers make a better connection with your team – and that increases the desire to work with your company.

What should be included with your business blog author profile?

• Picture
• Name, Title
• Specialty
• Possibly some hobbies
• Links to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profiles

Don’t skimp on your business blog profiles.

When selling business blogging software, I typically avoid the word blog.  BLOG is a 4 letter word.

The stories about blogs that people hear in the news are the flashier ones, not the realistic ones.

Is the news going to talk about a 300% increase in someone’s website traffic after adding a blog?  Probably not.

But that company may be throwing a party because a 300% jump in online sales could be big.

Focus on a good outcome with business blogging, not the hype.

How to generate targeted sales and leads with business blogs.

Before investing in any type of sales lead tool, you should think about the following.

1. Your lead generation must be able to target your target market
2. Lead Generation must be a business system that can be measured
3. Demonstrate a ROI that justifies its expense and time after an expected trial period

Commit to Lead Generation – then move on.

There is nothing wrong with trying something that ends up not working.  You should be trying new things within your budget that are targeted and measurable to generate sales and targeted leads all the time.  If someone sells you a lead generation system and says you will get results and then it does not happen, stop doing it and move that budget to a different lead generation trial.  But make sure you give it a reasonable amount of time first.

For example, Buzzoodle is an organic lead generation tool.  To know if it is working and how long it will take to get great leads you have to look at the competition in the marketplace to assess the results.  It can produce sales in as little as a few weeks but it depends on the leads target market for your business.  Lead generation with blogs does work great for most marketplaces, but only when you commit to a solid strategy and make a clear call to action.  Just having a blog that is not business blog oriented will not produce sales leads.

The Generation of Sales and Targeted Leads  is going to increase greatly if you start with your end goal in mind with any lead generation product.  You may say you are going to spend $5,000 on advertising in trade publications and if you first set a goal of the number of targeted leads you want to get from the advertisement, you will know if it has a good return.  How will you monitor the lead generation and sales from the advertisement?  If it turns out to have a great return on investment in the form of closed sales, you are going to spend $5,000 every month, right?  So you have to know the metrics and goals going into any sales effort or targeted lead generation.