Category Archives: Software

Free alternatives to WordPress

The guys over at BlogPerfume have a look at what other free blog platforms available are next to WordPress, to host your blog with. Their list is rather complete and makes it easier to discover most alternative platforms. Handy if you want to move away from WordPress or want to have a look at all the platforms before making your choice and chose for a specific blog platform.

A while ago I published a similar but shorter list on BloggingPro. Although I only mentioned the then poplar options, I went a little more in-depth and compared pros and cons of listed platforms.

Originally posted on June 29, 2009 @ 10:48 am

Binary Bonsai Transitions to Habari

For those of you that don’t know my history with blogging, you might not know that Michael Heilemann was the person that got me interested in WordPress thanks to his blog, Binary Bonsai.

It showed me what WordPress could do in a design sense, and how useful the software could be, and as a result, I have always followed his site, and kept tabs on the projects he has worked on.

Today, his feed let the world know that he is moving his site from WordPress to Habari, a new blogging platform that he has helped design and develop.

Alright, listen up. Binary Bonsai has been powered by WordPress literally since its very first release. And as a consequence, I’ve been pretty involved with the WordPress community over time, especially these last few years with K2 (which is still in production I might add). But, while it has served me well for all of that time, to kick the carcase of the dead horse that is the girlfriend metaphor; we’ve grown apart. And today, I’m moving out of the apartment. So it’s goodbye WordPress and…

Hello Habari.

I have tried out Habari, back when it first came out, and while I was impressed, it wasn’t mature enough for me to really take a keen interest in it, but with its recent 0.5 release, many people are jumping back on board to see if Habari has the new “it thing” that many bloggers are looking for.

Currently, his blog looks relatively basic, which has been the presentational direction he has been heading in for a while, but I hope he adds his own stylistic touch to the site over the coming days, and also blesses the world with his transition guide, helping those interested in taking the leap know how he managed to move his extensive archive over to Habari, and get his blogging work flow back on track.

Will others now take the leap and join Michael in trying out Habari on their own main blogs? It is too early to tell, but this is definitely an interesting development in my world.

Originally posted on August 11, 2008 @ 5:49 pm

My Best RSS Newsreader

I am finding more and more that I am considered old fashioned by not using Google Reader, or one of the top pieces of software and online applications listed on Life Hacker’s recent post on the best RSS newsreaders.

They included in their list Google Reader, NetVibes, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, and Sage.

I am a fan of Bloglines. I have been using it since I started with reading RSS, and I have tried other software, especially desktop applications in the years since starting to read blogs in such a manner.

Why Bloglines?

Being that it was my first RSS reader, I have become accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts that Bloglines has, as well as the workflow, and user interface that it includes.

Everything is simple, includes the features I need, and seems to update with the latest posts fairly rapidly.

I really don’t think there is any other reason I use Bloglines, other than it was my first RSS reading tool, and I have become accustomed to it and it has been very stable for me. I haven’t suffered through any major changes in usability or stability.

What Would Make Me Switch?

I don’t like the “improvements” in the open beta version of Bloglines which changes a few things, mostly in design, and so if that happens to become the only version, I might switch.

Also, if I found some system that did have a better workflow for me, then I would switch.

I doubt I would ever move to a desktop client, as I work on two or three different computers every day, and each one uses a different operating system, so it would complicate things further, so my choice would probably be to move to Google’s RSS Reader, but when I would move depends on Bloglines, as I am in no rush, and it would be mistakes from them that would make me leave.

Which RSS reader do you use, and why? What are the advantages of using Google Reader over Bloglines, if you have tried both?

Originally posted on May 20, 2008 @ 6:39 pm

Cyber BLOGGER Review

Before I start the review of the Cyber BLOGGER software, I want to make it very clear that I do not like content scrapers, and have had my content shared with the world more than once, and it is very frustrating, and so when PHP Script Lab contacted me to review their software, I almost said “no”.

Instead, I decided instead to give them the benefit of the doubt, and learn more about what Cyber BLOGGER can and can’t do. As with all reviews on this site, I will be giving the facts as well as my honest opinions.

Cyber BLOGGER bills itself as a powerful tool for obtaining free search traffic. Basically, the software allows you to quickly and easily set up an unlimited variety of blogs on Google’s Blogger blogging platform. Creating a blog on Blogger is free, and you don’t have to pay for bandwidth, allowing you to create as large of a blog as you’d like, and as it gets more and more popular, the traffic can all be converted to profit.

Once you’ve set up your blogs, you can then feed content into your blog from any RSS feed, allowing you to quickly build up a huge amount of content including hundreds, if not thousands of posts written by other people.

Surely by now, if you have been following this site, or blogging in general, you are asking yourself, why you would want to do this?

Google’s Blogger is well-liked by their own search engine, and as such content on Blogger appears in the Google search results fairly fast. Add to this the ability to monetize your blogs with Google AdSense, and you have a system that rewards people looking to make a quick buck, and so it is not hard to see the appeal of this software.

If you want to make some money using what people call the “long tail” effect on search engines, you can do it using Cyber BLOGGER.

I have seen time and again, people talking about how much money they made from similar systems, and while the software is amazing, what it does isn’t always the most ethical way to go about getting your content. I would suggest this software more for people looking to be a little more on the evil side of making money online.

One way I could see this being useful for someone in a non-evil way, would be to republish a certain category of their own blog on Blogger, leaving links back to their original blog intact. This could help drive traffic to your already established blog, without having to create new content.

As long as the duplicate content penalty was less than the incoming traffic from the Cyber BLOGGER run blog, you would be ahead of the game, and even better, you could be much more aggressive with your monetization techniques on the Blogger blog. That is just one example of where a blogger could use this software, without taking content that isn’t their own. I am sure there are many other uses for this software besides the nefarious purposes.

One feature that I wish they would remove is the ability for the software to remove links in the content. I think content scrapers should keep links in place, especially if the content that they are taking isn’t their own. I do like how the software can cut out images though, as they sometimes won’t work with the Blogger template you have chosen to show off the content.

Cyber BLOGGER isn’t a desktop application, and requires a real piece of hosting space that has at least Apache 1.3.x or above, PHP 4.3 or above, MySQL 4.1 or above and Zend Optimizer 2.8 or above. The regular price for this software is $95, but currently it is on sale for $65.95.

While I find it very tempting to go this route, and use other people’s content to make me money, I just can’t justify it to myself. That, however, doesn’t mean that this software isn’t well written, in fact, it seems to be a very strong product, and very good at what it does. I wish they would work on respecting the original content creators just a little more, but I think that is a flaw all republishing software currently has.

Also, it seems to me that the advantages of something like this will only continue until Google gets its act together and thwarts this type of abuse of their systems. So if you want to make more money online now, and you are interested in using software that allows you to create an unlimited amount of Blogger blogs, Cyber BLOGGER is it.

Originally posted on January 19, 2008 @ 8:22 pm