Comments on: What Blogging Widgets Annoy You, Help You?

By: Gordan

Gordan — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:07:46 +0000

Mike,

I did toy with switching a blog from Blogger to WordPress, and hated it. Blogger seems (to me) much more intuitive.

I have noticed that Blogger is hit-or-miss with spotting links to posts that you write. I would like instant notification when there is a link to something I’ve written. I shouldn’t have to go looking for that…and then not find it even when it exists.

Also, a simple site stat counter: why should you have to go to a third party site and then go through the time and energy to download foreign HTML code? What would be so hard about offering a site meter?

Also, as to templates: It shouldn’t be hard to offer one where the background artwork can be something you import. And then, as long as you’re keeping the same elements in your template, why can’t you have full freedom to arrange them the way you want?

Another pain: The trick with merely posting the first paragraph or so of your posts on the front page, with a little “Read More” button at the bottom…Why’s that so stinking difficult? That ought to be a function you can download with a click of a button.

Also, they sure make it a big process to change your icon.

By: Mike Young

Mike Young — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:59:12 +0000

blueballs: I don’t see that really as an additional problem. It does get into issues of revenue models and competition. There are companies like Walgreens, Walmart, etc who would love for you to print your photos through them. And uploading pics to them is pretty easy. The hard part comes in when you wish to share your photos with online viewers or use the pics in blog posts. This is where the Kodak stuff really breaks. But having persistent storage for online sharing and organization with the ability to have nice ones printed and delivered shouldn’t be difficult at all.

katherine: Don’t worry about it. But your note does touch on something interesting; and that is the idea of being able to tag any photo or video as private or public sharing. And if the item is private, being able to designate who can and cannot see it. Not everyone who is a subscriber should be able to see everything.

By: katherine

katherine — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:39:26 +0000

I’m not sure if anything I have to say will be of help to you. I don’t use any online storage for any of my photos…I just keep ‘em on my computer. I did have a Flickr account but I hardly used it, and recently there were a number of cases where images were lifted off of Flickr and used on other blogs/news sites that freaked me out a bit, so I deleted almost all of my pictures from there. I’ve never used like, Photobucket or anything like that because I don’t see the point when I can just use my computer, you know?

Sorry. This probably isn’t what you were hoping to hear.

By: blueballs

blueballs — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:30:58 +0000

So I don’t blog but work with a lot of photographers. One tool that may be an additional feature down the road would be in addition to storage a place to sell the photos to clients. I realize this makes matters more difficult because it brings up the problem of publishing as well as dealing with money.
It could be added on as part of premium subcription service farther down the road.

By: Mike Young

Mike Young — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:17:13 +0000

D: Blogger is a nice system. But because everything is crammed into a single template page, it is tough to modify, unless you are good at some form of code or can spot patterns pretty easily.

WordPress, is very modular in that you can modify the header, footer, sidebar, mainpage, etc. You can modify these sections in the Administrative page or with a 3rd party tool. More importantly, WordPress is extensible with 3rd party plug-ins. This means you can add entirely new functionality without ever touching a line of code. Simply upload the plug-in and then turn it on in the administrative panel.

The wikipedia for tracking help is probably a very good idea. I agree that help on some of these sites really sucks.

Thanks for the feedback.