Blogs, Technology, Tools
Mar 14, 2007
Todd Zeigler
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My Top 5 Blogging Tools

The excellent Pro Blogger has a post up asking reader's to list their top 5 blogging tools.  I started to write my list in the comments, but I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make it a full blog post.

So here are my top 5 blogging tools:

(1) WordPress

WordPress is the best blogging platform for my money because it is easy to use, full featured and completely open source (free!).  Make sure to install Akismet to help with comment spam and WP-Cache to help deal with the Slashdot/Digg/Fark affect.  Do those two things and you are golden.

(2) Windows Live Writer

Even in the latest version of WordPress, it is annoying/difficult to write longer posts within the online HTML editor.  Windows Live Writer is a good piece of blog editing software you install locally to write and manage your blog posts.  It allows you to post your blog entries without ever logging in to the WordPress interface.  Full review here.

(3) Feedburner

We are currently hosting our RSS feed on Feedburner, and also use it for stats tracking and management of our email alerts.  By hosting our RSS on Feedburner, we are able to measure how many subscribers we have and also add goodies to our feed (Digg buttons, number of comments, etc.). 

(4) Clicky

Clicky is a great tool for tracking blog statistics.  A full review is here.  I've also heard that Statcounter and Mint are excellent but haven't tried them out yet. 

(5) MyBlogLog

We have just been using this for a month or so and I continue to think the blog-based social networking tool is a great way to build a community around your blog.  Full review is here.

What are your favorite tools?

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com/ Steve

    I’ve used Statcounter ever since I started blogging. While it wasn’t designed with blogs in mind, I’ve found the data helpful. While I’ve used Google Analytics, Performancing, FeedBurner (for stats), and MyBlogLog, Statcounter remains the tool I check most frequently.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com/ Steve

    I’ve used Statcounter ever since I started blogging. While it wasn’t designed with blogs in mind, I’ve found the data helpful. While I’ve used Google Analytics, Performancing, FeedBurner (for stats), and MyBlogLog, Statcounter remains the tool I check most frequently.

  • kenneth

    For some reason I think of most tools as services that take away either control or performance from your site. (assuming you host your own blog)

    I like almost all hosted blogging software- blosxom, wordpress, etc. And yes, Akismet is essential.

    But it seems that adding JavaScript to help with stats that get sent to another site (goog analytics, clicky, statcounter, hitbox, feedburner etc) could be problematic at times with performance for something you could just as easily do with your own htaccess logs. (maybe not as easily with the RSS though)

    Maybe I’m wrong and should try them again. . .

    Have fun in Vegas

  • kenneth

    For some reason I think of most tools as services that take away either control or performance from your site. (assuming you host your own blog)

    I like almost all hosted blogging software- blosxom, wordpress, etc. And yes, Akismet is essential.

    But it seems that adding JavaScript to help with stats that get sent to another site (goog analytics, clicky, statcounter, hitbox, feedburner etc) could be problematic at times with performance for something you could just as easily do with your own htaccess logs. (maybe not as easily with the RSS though)

    Maybe I’m wrong and should try them again. . .

    Have fun in Vegas

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Kenneth – I understand the aversion of javascript and it can slow things down and just generally make things messy. We try to keep the number of scripts we run to a minimum and haven’t really noticed any performance problems on our blog. But I think these things are worth it.

    Go Horns.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Kenneth – I understand the aversion of javascript and it can slow things down and just generally make things messy. We try to keep the number of scripts we run to a minimum and haven’t really noticed any performance problems on our blog. But I think these things are worth it.

    Go Horns.

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