Blogging Tools I Use

For Sarah and a couple of other recent questions:

I use several common tools to monitor my site.

One is sitemeter. It tells me things like this: who visited my blog, how long they stayed, how many pages they viewed. You can view it yourself by clicking here.

Many blogs use this free service, you just have to post a little code in your blog template.

I just tried out another one: mybloglog. It tells me what link people clicked on as they left my blog. It is a 14-day trial. Interesting, but not earth-shattering. I don’t think I’ll subscribe to it.

Another common resource that I use is “Bloglines.” It is an RSS reader—a tool that lets me monitor the blogs that I am interested in. It checks them on a routine basis and lets me know if a blog has been updated (or not, as is the case with most of the choir blogs lately). That’s how I read the choir blogs so fast . . . I just pay attention to the ones that are updated—not because I check them hourly!

Bloglines is great. I use their service to "clip" interesting things I find on the web, usually blogs, that I want to remember for later. Although they have a "clipping" service, I haven't figured it out yet, so I started a "clip blog" . . . mostly for myself. You can see it here, but I don't use it to "address my public." There isn't much on it, but I think I will use it more in the future. I found a "bloglines toolkit" for Firefox (the browser i use) that helps me add content to that blog easily.

(i just realized that many of you may not know about firefox and you are still struggling with internet explorer. once you've found tabbed browsing, you won't go back . . . )

One great RSS reader that you have to purchase is FEEDDEMON.

I really like it but I haven’t paid money for it. Probably won’t but I enjoyed the free trial period. (Am I cheap?)

Screenshots are here.

That's it! Blogging lesson over for today.

Coming up: Incredible blog i found today. So many great ideas and thoughts!