Well, I've not blogged on any consistent level. But now, thanks in no small part to metaPost, I think I might get back into the blogging/publishing scene some more.
My blogging vacillates between using the News Articles module or the DNN Blog module. I really like the News Articles module because of a) the different categories and b) the multi-page feature and c) the control of the publishing workflow (submission/approval/etc). There's other reasons, too, such as the cleaner Admin tools (more icon-based). But in truth, I haven't kept up with DNN's Blog module, and I'm sure the latest version is a lot better than the one I was looking at back at the DNN 3.x and 4.0.x days (2006/7).
But there's more to my being out of the blogging besides "which module do I use". I've also been out of it because of the "bother". Sometimes, it's just too much work using a blog. Think of it. You typically have to:
- Go to the web site
- Log in
- Go to your blog page
- Click [whatever] to start a new blog
- Write your content, proof it, get it all right
- Post/publish it
Whew!
Well, with metaPost, it's a whole lot easier to do this in a DNN-based web site! All I have to do for a new post is
- Open up Windows Live Writer (WLW) or MS Word
- Write my content
- Publish to my blog
That's only half of the steps to the web-based approach - and two of those steps are just mouse-clicks! And there's more benefits to the WLW approach:
| Using the Browser | Using Windows Live Writer |
| No "undo" to fix/revert content after posting. You have to go back into the post & re-write the changes by hand. | As long as you still have WLW open, you can just "undo" and re-post. |
| Images are a pain! If you want to use one, you have to upload the image, then get the image link embedded right. At a minimum, it's a two-step process, with the first step taking a lot of clicks. | Images are easy. If you insert a picture, then WLW will upload the picture to your blog for you. It's a simple one-step world. |
| Can't work on a blog off-line. At all. | Write your blog off-line, and even save a draft off-line. Publish it when you're ready. |
If I took the time to think about it, there's probably a bunch of other niggley things with the browser-based approach to editing/writing the blogs or articles. But when you discover all the extra plug-ins available for Windows Live Writer, then you just have to go that way. WLW has been around for a little while (in beta during 2007), and other off-line blog posting programs have been around since the start of 2007 (some, maybe earlier).
But the problem with the different blog-posting programs is that they've mostly relied on 3rd party blogging sites. I wanted to write stuff for my own DNN-based web site. I like having total control of my own web site. It doesn't just have to be a "blog" - I can extend it any way I need or want. Hey - I'm a developer, so I'm often thinking of new or better ways of doing things. But there weren't any DNN modules to bridge the gap between off-line tools and DNN. That is, until metaPost.
I'll probably write a bit more about metaPost as I get time to explore its features and use it more. But one thing's for sure: I'm going to be able to blog & write articles easier and faster, thanks to WLW + metaPost + DNN. (No more excuses - I hope!)