Since Blogger was down most of this morning, it adds a little kick to my publicizing of Big Blog Tool, a Blogger alternative weblog publishing system. They’re charging right off the bat, but it’s a very small charge – I didn’t hesitate to spend $8 for three months of access (I’m just testing it, since I’m still working on my own system). It’s the first Blogger alternative I’ve seen that follows the Blogger model: runs on their servers, but uploads the content to yours. I bet with them charging immediately, it will keep traffic down and thus help with uptime. They have some nifty features, like multiple content areas on a single page, remote templates, and “friendly links” so you can have fellow webloggers’ names translate into links to their sites automatically.
From the little I’ve seen, it looks like a good system with lots of enthusiasm and plans for the future. Bravo to their decision to charge. I’m just surprised it took this long for real Blogger competitors to emerge. Here’s hoping this is the first of many.
::cough::MovableType::cough::
Well, Movable Type is one of those hard-to-install local server apps. If you’re a sysadmin and willing to learn the system, they’re great. But for the vast majority of webloggers, they just don’t cut it, no matter how many features they have.
I do think there’s a future for hosted versions of these apps, since then you’re letting someone else do the administration but still reaping the benefits of a more localized system. We’ll see how it goes.