Chinwag's Old Blog: Blog Starting Points

Aside from highlighting some of the useful bits and pieces that crop up on the discussion lists, setting up this Blog gave me an opportunity to delve into the different tools for putting together a Blog. It was fascinating to discover how much the tools have evolved since I first started looking at them a year or so ago.

It really couldn't be easier to get a Blog running even with minimal and in some cases no HTML knowledge whatsoever. In the end we plumped for a server-based Blog tool called Movable Type. Here's some of the resources I used to check out the different options:

I'd start with John Hiler's article at Microcontent, although his company has it's own Blogging software, he's done a great job of researching and categorising the different tools available. At the very least scan his article and you should get a good idea of the right tools to fit your requirements and more importantly, that you'll be able to install and use.

I was amazed at how the range and sophistication of the different blogging tools has developed since I last checked them out, about a year ago. It's a doddle to get up and running using the templates available on services like Blogger to get your blog, up and running, even if you don't have any web space to host it on. If you do, fantastic, just upload your blog to it using FTP. Couldn't really be easier.

What does surprise me is that more ISPs aren't providing blogging software as standard with the packages they're offering. Perhaps it's just a matter of time. Or maybe blogging is the arena of an obsessed few. I can see plenty of reasons where blogging software would be a useful addition to a corporate websites and there's already a few popping up:

If you spot any other large corporates using blog software or integrating blog-type content into their websites, let me know.