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As I mentioned yesterday, it seems that a new blogging tool or service is being released every day to help bloggers add a new feature to their blog. It can become quite overwhelming to choose between them all.
As a result I thought it’d be worth having an open mike discussion on Blog Tools.
I’m not talking about blog platforms (we’ve covered that in this series but add ons that you might like to use on your blog.
What do you use?
Here are a few categories of addons with some of the things I use – but I’d love to see yours also. To contribute to the conversation either leave your list of blog tools in comments below or write a post on the topic on your own blog and leave a comment below with the link (or trackback this post).
Statistics
Blog Editors
Plugins
News Aggregateor
That’s all that is coming to mind at the moment but I’m sure I’ll add more later as I think of it. What blog tools (not platforms) do you use? Feel free to give your reasons and links to them.
For my web stats I use a nice little analysis program called webanalyse. You can find it at webanalyse.com It has proved very useful in tracking my stats on some of the sites that I own, so I figure I’d put it in with my blog. It works great and is somewhat customizable. I highly recommend it.
Just wanted to say that link I gave in my last comment is wrong. Its actually webanalyse.fr. My mistake.
I have been flipping between Qumana and Zoundry (www.zoundry.com) for my blog authoring tool. At the moment the new beta of Qumana (especially with its Blog Manager) is keeping me on it at the moment.
Molly
slimstat, google analytics, sitemeter, performancing (sometimes, usually just straight from the site)…akismet…
Ecto is great, but is there any tool that can actually do post-dating of posts? If you’re making a ton of posts in one go, you don’t want them all appearing on the site at once (or if you’re going on vacation). I couldn’t work out how to do this.
Ecto does that in the mac version Peter
Excellent. Guess I’ll be downloading it again. Last time I tried it it didn’t have this and it’s the only reason I didn’t decide to keep using it. :)
Stats: AWStats
RSS: FeedBurner
Email Syndication: FeedBlitz
And my hidden gem for sourcing content: Website Watcher
I use Website Watcher as my RSS reader, but also to monitor normal websites with no rss. It highlights any changes that have been made on the website since I last visited.
I also use Technorati for keeping track of mentions of Entreplist and other related keywords such as ‘youth entrepreneurship’.
The tools I use vary depending on the website. I’ve already made a list of the tools that power my OptiNiche blog and I’m currently experimenting with FeedBurner and Aweber (newsletter management) at my Destination: Success blog.
For my blog authoring, I use w.bloggar. One of my favourite features happens to be its ability to allow custom tags; I have quite a few defined.
I have my qualms with it, but it gets the job done.
And last, but surely not least – good old fashioned pen and paper. (The off-line kind.)
I’m using Google Reader now as my RSS reader. I thought it was a bit of overkill at first, but now it just makes life so easy. ESPECIALLY since I use my keyboard to navigate 90% of the time, and I can use it 100% of the time with GR.
For WP plugins I use the one that removes nofollow tags, and I use Ultimate Tag Warrior. To get rid of MT spam I use the MySQL shell.
See my Essential blogger tools.
[…] Blog Tools […]
Dunno why no one mentioned Blog Flux – pinging, stats, link tracking (with more info) all in one place.
Mint for statistics (not free, but at $30 US it’s well worth it).
For authoring, editing CSS and tweaking templates and modules I use an old fashioned HTML editor called HomeSite, which was purchased by Macromedia a while back, which was then purchased by Adobe not too long ago, but it is still being supported.
I just finished redirecting all of my outgoing feeds through Feedburner for tracking, and Photoshop for graphics.
What’s the main reason for you guys using FeedBurner, btw? Do you have the click tracking to see how popular your various headlines are, etc? Or is it just for the circulation numbers?
All of the above Peter. I just like their range of features – knowing the stats is great, but they have some interesting options and features, all packaged up quite nicely.
A blog editor I have found RocketPostis pretty nifty, especially the related post feature and the pull quote feature. But it has a couple of quirks that bug me. I have no luck in getting it to download the posts from one of my blogs and I cannot seem to figure out how to get it to future post.
But for those who can’t deal with html code, like my wife, it is a lifesaver.
I have w.bloggar but am never sure how it will post my posts, will it ping every sevice within my blog? Also I tend to get errors in w.bloggar on all three computers that I use it on whenever I post. In the end I just use the Movable Type web interface although I am always looking for something better.
As for feed aggregators I have never really used blogolines although Darren I know you always use it. For an aggregator I have been using SharpReader or RSS bandit both seem good. I tend to do the quickpost straight out of the aggregator so that it picks up the trackback and allows me to add content to a link.
These are the tools I’m using so far…
Stats:
Site Meter
Techorati to see who’s linking to my blog
Syndication:
Feedburner for RSS/Atom feeds
FeedBlitz for email subscriptions
Pings:
Pingoat
Keyword/Back Link Tracker:
DigitalPoint.com
I’m a little late, but hey, I’ve been out of it.. heh.
Stats: Site Meter, Extreme Stats, Urchin, BlogBeat.net (it’s not free, but is very cheap, and well worth it), and – occasionally – Technorati.
Syndication: Feedburner and Feedblitz.
Pings: Pingomatic (pingoat no longer allows free usage of their XML-RPC server)
Authoring: Ecto for Windows (am beta testing Ecto2 which will include WYSIWYG editing), and Qumana. WB Editor2 is also excellent, but I can’t afford to register it, right now.
WP Plugins: Related Posts, Incoming Links, Top Posts, BAStats, Search Meter, and others.
Technorati ; If I had to pick one tool that’s of most help to me !
I like to use mybloglog and technorati and blogger.
[…] – What is a Blog? – 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers – Is a Blog Right for You? – How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog – Choosing a Blog Platform – Choosing a Domain Name for your Blog – Blog Tools […]
[…] If you are just beginning to blog, you are not left out of the problogger agenda. There is a complete section just for you. Step by step (loving that structure) advice for starting your blog and achieving readers, and income for it. It is not soft advice either. Read articles like “Blog Tools“, “Blog Design for Beginners“, “Using Titles Effectively on Blogs” and one I could of really used when I was first starting, “10 Techniques for Finding Blog Readers ” […]
The best rss aggregator I use is Google Reader. Has everything I need really, and I haven’t found an online tool that matches it yet. Hope this helps!
-Ken
[…] To easy the handling of the blog and to add some advanced features to the blog specialized blogging tools are used. They are commonly known as blog plugins and for every blogging platform different plugins are created. It is always good to know what plugins the other bloggers use. […]
very useful – looking at mybloglog – but I use a different way of blogging – i dont use archive – since ia am using a differerent CMS program – I hope it does not matter with some of these tools
[…] Also, Darren Rowse, author of Problogger.net (top dog blogging resource), lists endo in this post. […]
I have put http://www.mybloglog.com on my website for past 3 days. There are couple of readers on my website and I can see when I log on. But I cannot see them on my blog.
Is it only for paid members ?
Cheers,
Santosh
I started my blog two days ago. These tools are very useful. Thank you for listing your WP plugins.
This is my first post so was just chcking.
I think, it’s a good tools. Thanks for post your article, i want to try it, to make my blog more good than now
You missed Tynt Tracer http://www.tynt.com for an analytics tool. It is great. It shows you what people are copying from your site and when they paste the selection it adds a link back to your site.