Oct
20
This post is written in response to Justin Kistner’s group writing project, Favorite tools round up but I thought it would be more fun to learn about your favourite blogging tools rather than your working tools 
Share a list of your favorite blogging tools that you use blog. You could share why you like the tool or even why it’s better than another popular one. Tools could be desktop and web applications, or they could be a mash up of a few services, or something like a manually maintained Excel spreadsheet.
- Quoted and modified from Justin Kistner
My favourite tools are as follow, in no particular order:
- WordPress — This is undeniably the best and most user-friendly blogging platform I’ve ever used.
- Firefox — Need I say more? Firefox even comes with a host of add-ons!
- StatCounter – The only statistics software I use on my blog because I don’t need any more to confuse myself.
- del.icio.us — I am finding del.icio.us more and more useful. I can bookmark almost anything without leaving the page and get back to them whenever I want. And I get to tag them, which makes sorting remarkably easy.
- Bloglines — I read my favourite blogs and news via Bloglines and it picks feeds up fairly quickly too!
- co.mments — Allows me to track the comments I have left on various blogs without receiving email notifications that flood my mailbox. Nifty!
- Webshot — Download the small (less than 1MB) program and you can take a complete screenshot of your blog (very useful if you’re about to show off your new blog theme/design)!
- Flickr — I get to post lots of pictures and share them with anybody, and I get to post them on my blog. I get to decide who sees what too!
What about you? Are you using the same tools that I am using? Or are you using something more powerful? Share all! 
If you think this post might benefit other bloggers:
4 of the 10 tools used by you is being used by me as well. I thought of using RSS Feed Reader but I am still hopping here and there though and the Google Reader I used only contains 50% of my bookmarked blogs.
After your recommendation, I am also a delicious user now.
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I too am on Wordpress. Firefox is cool for web stuff of all kinds - especially with the Developer’s toolbar, but I don’t use it because it doesn’t support Keychain Access (mac program that saves paswords etc). I used to use StatCounter, but I moved to Google Analytics. I got tired of StatCounter’s user interface (it’s probably improved by now).
Vienna is my favourite RSS reader.
Webshot looks cool - I wonder if there’s one like that for mac. There’s screenshot stuff already installed on mac (Command+Shift+3), but it doesn’t get a full webpage in one like that.
I use most of the tools that you use too. But del.icio.us url is kinda hard to type sometimes.
This is unrelated, but last week I saw a tortoise(or turtle?). I’m not sure what it name is, can you help me out? It has a soft shell, and I believe it’s the type people consume - they call it ’sui yu’(water fish haha).
It crawled in font of me when I was riding my motorbike. Don’t worry though, it made it to the other side to a nearby lake. :-)
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Hi JS, did you know that you can type “delicious” on the address bar and hit ENTER and you will be automatically brought to the del.icio.us website?
And, if the turtle that you saw was known locally as “sui yu”, then it was a freshwater softshell turtle. It had a slightly flattened back, and a slightly pointed mouth, right?
I used wbloggar, and Opera. Firefox is just crap
Bold statement melvin. I think you’ll find about 35% of internet users disagree with you. Including me, even though I don’t use FF either.
The only two we have in common is WordPress and Firefox. I also use Safari and Opera to surf the web.
I use Google Analytics for my stats as soon as I find something I like more I’ll switch. I tried the co.mments for about a week it kept freezing on me so I ditched it. That was before their update though who knows it might not do that now.
I use Google Reader as my RSS Feed. Aperture 1.5 is my photo editing software. I take a lot of pictures and post many on my Vegan Momma and my photoblog. :-)
For screenshots I use the built in feature. I’m on a Mac so I hit Shift, Apple symbol, 3 to take a full screen shot and Shift, Apple symbol, 4, to chose the area I want to capture. I’m sure there are more I’m just not thinking about them at the moment, lol.
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Thanks for the tip on delicious!
And yes, I think that’s the type of turtle I saw. I hope it doesn’t bite though cause I was going to save it from being attack by ants (the gigantic red ones) when it came to the surface. Luckily it managed to escape.
Btw, I use 3 ver. of firefox - Windows, Portable Firefox that I keep in my USB thumb drive so I can use firefox with all my settings at any computer, and also Ubuntu’s Firefox. Ubuntu is a different OS. My laptop runs 2 OS albeit separately.
JS, softshell turtles don’t bite, they SNAP! I always tell visitors who come to see our terrapins that as a rule of thumb, anything that has a mouth, bites
If I go by your list, I’ll score a 4 out of 10. :-)
To me, the best blogging tool will be super fast internet connection speed and super fast CPU. I do alot of graphics. :-)
Define tools : Software?
If you’re referring to anything else that helps in blogging, I’d like to add Feedburner to the list and Stumble.Upon.
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WordPress - IT is the blogging tool of choice … once it is properly extended, its functionality enhanced and its limits streatched beyond boundaries it was intitially designed for
Alex
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WordPress and del.icio.us are big ones for me too.
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Mine are as follows:
1. WordPress
2. Firefox
3. Notepad
4. Flickr
Services that help me with blogging:
1. StumbleUpon
2. del.icio.us
3. Google
That’s all. I think that’s what most other people use too!
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Wordpress and Firefox are and awesome combination. I also use google reader a bit. There are heaps of good tools popping all the time on the web.
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I’d say Google Reader. Apart from being a RSS reader, I am currently using it to track my comments. After commenting on a post, I will subscribe to the comment of the post. This will be arranged in a folder. New comments will show up as an item in the reader. I will unsubscribe to it when I want to stop tracking the comment.
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I didn’t know you could subscribe to the comments of one post… I thought that subscribing to comments was to the whole blog’s comments.
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Oh yes, you can, Kristarella
You can subscribe to the comments of an individual post via the RSS feed, or you can tick the checkbox which says “I’d love to be notified of follow-up comments via e-mail”, or you can use third-party services such as co.mments to track your comments.
Cool, so if you weren’t using co.mments how do you get the individual post RSS - autodiscovery in your browser?
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@kristarella
It depends on the blog’s platform and theme design. Some themes provide a “subscribe to post comment” or equivalent under each post. Or else, just copy the URL of the post and add a “feed/” at the end of it.
Example:
This post’s URL is http://chenpn.com/2007/10/20/what-are-your-favourite-blogging-tools/
Therefore, the comments to this post will be http://chenpn.com/2007/10/20/what-are-your-favourite-blogging-tools/feed/
You can try it.
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Ooh, simple and elegant way of doing things
I’m still happy to use email subscriptions, but I’m glad to know this!
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I tried the email subscription once and gave up immediately. I received so many emails yet none was directed to me. LOL. It depends on individuals really. If it works for you, great news :-)
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Actually, Kelwin, that was what exactly happened to me too. That is also why I love co.mments so much. It’s web-based, and it doesn’t send me irrelevant emails, and I check my comments whenever and wherever I want to.
Subscribing to the individual post’s comments feed in Google Reader or Bloglines serves the same function, but with co.mments, it only takes ONE CLICK.
My tools:
1. WordPress
2. Firefox
3. Sitemeter
4. Google reader
5. StumbleUpon
That’s all, for now
But I will try co.mments, since you have mentioned it 
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I’m not a blogger, so I guess not many tools you mentioned are relevant to me, except Firefox! Firefox rocks!
I’m using Firefox, Statcounter and Bloglines. Used to use Webshots to share photos online with my friends in the past but I stopped using it already since few years back. I had a Flickr account but i have been neglecting it for years too
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I think the all the tools in the list is used by bloggers. Another important component of blogging is the social networking site for blog. MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog is the example. Don’t forget Technorati and YouTube. You cannot blog without knowing YouTube. :-)
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“You cannot blog without knowing YouTube. ”
Being unaware of You Tube might mean that you don’t read many other blogs or websites, but most of my favourite websites don’t post You Tube videos on their blog or they do it very sparingly. I would not be tempted to revisit a blog that only had You Tube videos - if I’d wanted that I’d just visit You Tube, not read a blog.
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Actually, that was what I wanted to say too, Kristarella
Blogs that are loaded with YouTube videos usually either take a long time to load, or buffer. Moreover, I don’t fancy videos much, I’d prefer to READ blogs 
But then again, different people (bloggers) have different styles. We don’t expect video blogs to go without videos, do we? LOL.
kristarella, what mean was, we use youTube as an online tool. Not necessarily, we post a youTube videos on our blog…I just post a video, in order to share with my blog visitor because it think it is worth to share a videos, once a while…I’m sorry if my statement is a bit unclear…
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Haha, that’s ok, it just sounded like an oddly definitive statement.
Perhaps I should have added a smiley so my response didn’t seem so serious
Have a great time at your brother’s wedding today! I’m going to the wedding of two of my good friends - very exciting!
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