Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Rock on! For better and for worse.

I was as excited as Peta when I read over at Inn0vate that Blogger Beta has been released.

Google has begun stamping its own mark on the site. It now allows google ID login. I wonder how long before it's google login only - like Flickr is now yahoo login only (unless you are - and I quote -"Old skool - rock on" ).

They are switching accounts to beta bit by bit, so if you want to play with the new features, you need to get another login and create a new blog. I did this last night and had a play.

For Better
I like the fact that you can now:

  • tag a post, using a "labels" option.
  • restrict who you want to see your blog by specifying email addresses, via a new "permissions" tab.
  • do more fiddling with the templates - although I couldn't see the new templates they advertised.
  • change my template by dragging and dropping boxes around the screen.
  • preset the default font and colour by selecting buttons. (Too lazy to change my template, I manually change the colour and font of each post)

For worse

But, in the "publishing" settings for my new blog there is one little line missing.This one:
You're publishing on blogspot.com
Switch to: FTP (publishing on your ISP server) Or SFTP (secure publishing on your ISP server)

You are locked into your blog address being at blogger and cannot use your own domain name.

Why would this disturb me? Well, a couple of days ago I went out and bought a domain name and some hostiing to use for this blog. I had just read this article at How to Blog advising anyone starting out to ensure their blog had its own domain name...and if you already have a blog to switch to your own domain name. This is so your readers can find you regardless of where your blog is based. If the blog host starts charging for what was a free service (like Typepad did), or makes changes you don't like, you can switch.

I'm still planning to use my own domain name so I'll stay on the old version of blogger while I decide whether to switch to WordPress on my own domain. Rock On!

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