Blogging Methods
One of the great things about blogging is the ease at which you can get your content up on the web. Usually a blogger goes to a web page, logs in, writes their post and presses publish. But what about some other ways to get your blog content published?
For this post I’m going to be focusing on using the Wordpress platform. I’m using a self-installed version which let’s me do all kinds of stuff to it. There may be ways to do this on other blogging systems and platforms. If you have questions let me know.
Many blogs have an API (or Application Programming Interface) which is a fancy way of saying that they have made ways to publish outside of using a web form. Often blogs can use an API called XMLRPC. You can ask your blog admin OR check the forums for your blog if this is supported. If it is then many blogging applications can directly post to your blog. Why is this good? Well if you have a slow connection you can write/spellcheck and then upload your post. A popular XMLRPC blogging too is ScribeFire (an Add-On to Firefox) which lets you blog from within your browser. You can be looking at one website and writing on your blog. The downside is that images and other multi-media items are not very well supported. In addition some features of your blog may not be available to you.
Email Publishing - You can set up Wordpress to check an email account for new posts. This lets update your site via an email address. Which is good if you can keep your email address hidden.
RSS Syndication - RSS isn’t only a way to publish information from your blog but gather information and publish it into your blog. There are several plugins for Wordpress that will let you subscribe to other RSS feeds and it will create posts in your blog (either directly published or drafts). This lets you start posts without having to do a LOT of work. I’m currently testing a few of thes plugins to see what’s best.
Web 2.0 Sites - Several sites allow you to update your blog right from themselves. Either from a plug in or through XMLRPC. This is nice as you can create blog posts automatically from things like your del.icio.us links, voicemail and other services. I like to use Jott (http://jott.com) to post to twitter as it’s easy and quick. I can just call an 800 number, tell jott I want to twitter, say what I want to say and hang up. In a couple of moments my “Jott” appears on Twitter. Great for twittering while driving.
I hope this has opened your eyes on some of hte other ways to publish posts to your blog. If you have questions or comments let me know and I’ll respond.