Posts Tagged
blogging
Blogging. It’s taken over the web and with its rise in popularity, several blogging platforms have emerged that have taken this incredibly popular media by storm. You might have heard of WordPress (it’s hard not to). Over 62 million websites across the globe use the software and this is probably down to its incredibly user-friendly interface, its ease of setting-up and its general communal adoption.
However, there are times when WordPress can be a little too bloated and it’s often been noted that it’s almost shifted its focus towards being a framework as opposed to a tool to encourage and enable blogging. In short, WordPress can sometimes feel too big for small sites.
If only there was a new, simpler tool, ready to change the face of blogging. Enter Anchor. It’s beautifully-designed, a pleasure to use and the theming system is so simple, you can mock up a theme from HTML/CSS in less than an hour. I did.
Let’s take a closer look.
For the past few years, blogging has taken over the internet and it’s no surprise that blogging software and platforms have been increasingly easier to quickly access and use. However, if you just want to write the occasional post and aren’t too bothered about maintaining a full blog, these tools can seem incredibly bloated. Themes, categories, tags — these can quickly become a major pain to maintain. That’s where Feathers comes in.
Feathers gets you focused on the writing again and you can be up and blogging in seconds — relieving the need to configure a full blog. Read on to find out more!
It seems that in today’s world, sharing things with people you know really is the name of the game. Over the past few months, apps and even whole operating systems have been changing to include those all important sharing features, and it seems like you can’t read an article nowadays without having to send it to someone you know.
Blogs are also a great way to share your thoughts with people out there on the Internet and previously unknown people have transformed themselves into big names on the Internet just via their writings and posts. Yet now there is a new approach to blogs, one that allows you to harness the power of social media on your own blog, or meeting fire with fire, and it comes by the name of OverBlog. It’s a European blog platform that has recently expanded into the US and boasts over 3 million active users with 34 million uniques, according to TechCrunch. But what makes it so interesting, and is it worth a shot? Let’s find out. (more…)
Whether you run your own blog network built around the open source WordPress platform or you just manage a few blogs for clients, you’ll probably understand how hard it is to manually maintain these through each one’s separate admin panels. It appears that the developers of ManageWP have decided to do something about this and have developed an app that takes care of the issue for those finding it to be a problem.
ManageWP allows bloggers and webmasters alike to manage multiple WordPress-powered websites easily within one central admin panel. With support for network-wide upgrades and the installing of additional plugins and themes to all blogs, it can be a real help to those finding this to be the case.
The Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator app that was launched in 2005. What the service does is pull streaming music from hundreds of different blogs (over 800 at the time of this writing), and compile them all in a single location for visitors to listen to, rate, and ultimately discover.
The great thing about The Hype Machine and the characteristic that keeps users coming back, is that it is always fresh, filled with new content, and has the uncanny ability to find truly great music before it ever even hits the mainstream.
If you enjoy music and like being on the edge of what’s currently popular and trending on the web, you should pop open a new tab or window in your browser and start playing with the Hype Machine immediately.
There are plenty of ways to manage a website, from home-baked content management systems to established juggernauts like WordPress and ExpressionEngine, from free solutions like Tumblr to paid services like Squarespace. You could roll your own HTML and CSS based static site, or cook up a fully responsive site based on a content management system designed for sites with millions of articles. It’s your choice.
Harmony is throwing its hat into the ring, hoping to appeal to users that are seeking a fully-functional website builder that is powerful and simple. It’s a hosted website design and content management system that’s designed to let you focus on creation rather than the engine behind your site. Let’s take a look and see if it has what you need to power your site.
Jux.com is a publishing platform which allows users to showcase their work in a streamlined portfolio format with no prior knowledge of coding or web design. Filling a void somewhere between Flickr and Blogger, Jux strives to set itself apart by being a publishing platform for creative professionals.
Users not only have the ability to quickly and easily post block quotes, articles, photos, videos, slideshows and top-10 countdowns, but also the tools to do so in a beautifully organized and fully intuitive gallery format. Jux.com was launched just a few short months ago, but it is already demonstrating why good design and approachability can lead to a substantial following. The rest of this post will delve into Jux and discuss the many benefits it can bring to your creative ventures.
Competition in the online app universe is totally different the real world. Many of the popular Internet destinations and services are virtual monopolies without any real competitor in sight. A few examples to this case are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, and more.
Similarly in the microblogging vertical there were two competitors initially – Tumblr and Posterous. Over the past few years, Tumblr adoption swelled and, despite being a simpler and cooler service in some ways, Posterous adoption dwindled drastically. Personally, I attribute this to the all the interesting content created by the new age of tumblogs.
Naturally, Posterous went back to the drawing board and chalked out their new strategy. They have pivoted and are now promoting their newest innovation, Posterous Spaces.
If you have a blog or write for an online publication, chances are you’ve used WordPress. From the free hosted WordPress.com blogs to customized WordPress.org installs like the ones that power AppStorm and other Envato blogs, WordPress is one web app you see all the time without realizing. In fact, aside from browsers like Chrome and Firefox, it’s one of the few opensource programs that average users love and know about.
WordPress has in many ways democratized web publishing. The newest version, WordPress 3.2, was recently released, and it aims to make it even easier for anyone from novices to pros to publish their thoughts online. From a speedier dashboard to a new UI overhaul to a distraction-free writing mode, there’s something in the new WordPress for everyone.
In the introduction to the latest issue of McSweeny’s Quarterly, the editors write, “More widespread and democratic access to education here and around the world means that there are more literate people…and more people reading than at any time in human history. So that’s good news.”
The bad news is that the ability to read a well-written sentence does not translate into the ability to write one. With more of our interaction taking place through emails, text messages, status updates, tweets, blog posts — heck, with more of us having to become writers — there are also more people in need of writing help than any time in human history.
Thankfully, Grammarly can give us that help. For a price.
