It seems like the number of blogging tools out there keeps multiplying. Which is both cool (beause it increases competition, which keeps improving the species) and worrisome (because it makes “committing” to one or another more problematic).
The two types of choices up to now have been a hosted blog (e.g., Blogger, which I presently use, or Big Blog Tool), or a site blog (e.g., Movable Type or Greymatter).
A hosted blog is usually fairly simple to operate (the host itself does all the hard work), but it’s an additional point of failure — if Blogger is down, you don’t get to post anything. And Blogger seems to be down a lot ….
A site blog puts it all in your control — except the stability of your own site, but that’s another matter — but usually requires you to delve into the mysteries and/or inconveniences of CGI scripts and FTP and other site-specific directory juggling.
Okay, none of those is a deal-killer. But … CityDesk is coming, supposedly in December (not unlike Christmas). And, if I’m reading this right, it basically lets you use your own machine as the host. You install the software on your (Windows) machine, set up your templates, and let the program FTP stuff to your site. Which makes you be responsible for backups (which we all do diligently, right?), but makes the rest of it (I should think) easy, easy, easy.
Okay, it will have the drawback of needing the app on any machine you want to post from. But that’s a different trade-off, and one I think I can handle.
I’ll let you know more when I find it out.
(Via Words Mean Things)