{"id":1603,"date":"2009-04-18T11:41:56","date_gmt":"2009-04-18T16:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/2009\/04\/inside-my-blogging-toolbox.html"},"modified":"2009-04-18T11:41:56","modified_gmt":"2009-04-18T16:41:56","slug":"inside-my-blogging-toolbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/inside-my-blogging-toolbox\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside My Blogging Toolbox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing that I had recently upgraded my blog, one of my readers wrote to ask, “You wrote a post<\/a> a year ago or so, providing an overview of your then-current blogging tools. Has anything changed in the last year? What tools are you using now?” Rather than replying to him individually, I thought I would post my answer here.<\/p>\n

\"Tools<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com\/inhauscreative<\/div>\n

The biggest change is that I have converted from TypePad<\/a> to WordPress<\/a>. I faithfully used TypePad for a number of years. It served me well. But several friends had converted to WordPress and encouraged me to consider it. I researched it over the Christmas holidays and then started searching for someone to help me with the conversion. I eventually stumbled upon 8BIT<\/a>, who is both a web designer and programmer. He proved to be a God-send.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So here are my current blogging tools:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. WordPress<\/strong>—This blogging platform comes in two forms: hosted<\/a> and self-hosted<\/a>. “Hosted” means that you sign up for an account on WordPress.com and they host your blog. If you are just starting out, this is the way to go. It is free and easy to use. At this level, I think WordPress and TypePad are comparable.\n

    “Self-hosted” means that you sign up for a hosting service and then install WordPress on your own server. This is what I have done. At John’s recommendation, I am using MediaTemple<\/a> for hosting. I started with the Grid-Service<\/a> option, but my traffic grew so quickly, that I had to upgrade to their Dedicated-Virtual<\/a> option.<\/p>\n

    I like WordPress because it is open source and easily extensible. It has a vast army of programmers who write themes<\/a> and plugins<\/a> for the platform. There is something for everyone. If you want to customize and tweak your blog, so that you get it just the way you envision, WordPress is the way to go. I’m sure you can do almost the same thing in TypePad, but I found it increasingly difficult to get it the way I wanted.<\/p>\n

    Here are the the plugins that I am currently using:<\/p>\n