Bloggers, what Blog software/services do you use?

[gavino200]

I've decided I'm going to start a blog. It's really mostly for myself as a way to keep track of techniques and information. I tend to learn, forget, and relearn before things really sink in. I use many of my threads here as a kind of breadcrumb guide to follow on my second or third pass through a subject. But it can be messy, and often it's hard to remember where I had recorded something. So I think a blog might be the answer. Having it open would be useful too as I might occasionally receive some advice from anyone who finds the site by accident.

 

I'm going to start researching sites, software, and services, to see what works for me. But if anyone here has experience blogging I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions. 

 

 

[roadstar_na6]

It's controversial but I think tumblr is actually a nice platform to use for stuff like this. You can html-code the whole thing to your liking and follow others at the same time to get inspired.

[Kiha66]

I don't have a blog myself, but blogspot seems somewhat popular for rail modelers.  

 

Two useful US blogs I follow for SP info
https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/
http://nightowlmodeler.blogspot.com/

 

These two are by fellow JNS member Brad
http://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/
http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/

[serotta1972]

Thanks Sam for sharing Brad’s Blogspot - it’s good see he’s staying active and is current with his layout blog.

 

I use Blogspot and it’s really just for me as well to keep a record of my bike rides though I have been very good at documenting my rides lately.

[Martijn Meerts]

It's kinda hard to beat Wordpress for functionality, but really only if you host it yourself, which also means you have to do quite a bit of maintenance. Any vulnerability in Wordpress (and there's many of them) will need to be addressed and you'll need to install various addons to make sure it remains secure-ish.

 

Wordpress code is pretty horrible, but as long as you don't need completely custom built templates and custom addons, you'll never see the code anyway.

 

[cteno4]

Wordpress use to offer their service of hosting cheap or free and they kept up patches and revisions along with a suite of trusted and secure plugins. 
 

hosting wp yourself is an exercise in security and work as martijn notes. Unending vulnerabilities popping up and tweaks needed and since it’s now the 800lb gorilla for websites it’s always being poked by bad guys and any site is fair game as they may not care about you but to get onto the server and systems. Many times they pound the little guys just because they think they will be more vulnerable or a place to practice of find new holes without being monitored much. Plug-ins that most users are seduced into adding on are a whole nother layer of security issues to deal with outside wp.

 

I would look at systems they maintain for you to make life easier unless you want to learn some it admin.

 

also look at how your posts are structured and archived, some like wp is all the way to a full website system, others are not all that different from a simple posting system and meant to be more in the moment and not a great archival system for your information.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

I find tumblr better than Wordpress. Wordpress never seemed to let me format things as I wanted. You just need to find a template you like and perhaps buy it.

[gavino200]

21 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

I don't have a blog myself, but blogspot seems somewhat popular for rail modelers.  

 

Two useful US blogs I follow for SP info
https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/
http://nightowlmodeler.blogspot.com/

 

These two are by fellow JNS member Brad
http://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/
http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/

 

Yes, blogspot seems like a real possibility. I'm a big fan of "tokyo-in-nscale" content-wise. I see that Quinntopia was also on blogspot. I like/liked his content, but he also had a very creatively structured blog with a good look. 

 

https://outlandmodels.com/products/market-store-interior-accessories-set-1-160-n-scale

 

I just checked to see what the King of Bloggers, KenS, used for Sumida Crossing. Seems that he used his own site (server?). sumidacrossing.org. I like that he's able to avoid the "giant margin" problem that most blogs seem to have. Quinn avoided that by putting graphical hotlinks to his train collections in the margins. 

 

http://www.sumidacrossing.org/

 

Dani's "Club N Caldes" is also a very well structured and easy to browse blog. Also self hosted. 

 

http://www.clubncaldes.com/

 

15 hours ago, serotta1972 said:

Thanks Sam for sharing Brad’s Blogspot - it’s good see he’s staying active and is current with his layout blog.

 

You gotta be kidding. Last post 2019. Brad has been a very bad boy. Get back to the computer and make some more of those awesome blog entries, Brad!!!!

 

Quote

 

I use Blogspot and it’s really just for me as well to keep a record of my bike rides though I have been very good at documenting my rides lately.

 

Another vote for Blogspot. 

 

13 hours ago, Martijn Meerts said:

It's kinda hard to beat Wordpress for functionality, but really only if you host it yourself, which also means you have to do quite a bit of maintenance. Any vulnerability in Wordpress (and there's many of them) will need to be addressed and you'll need to install various addons to make sure it remains secure-ish.

 

Wordpress code is pretty horrible, but as long as you don't need completely custom built templates and custom addons, you'll never see the code anyway.

 

 

I just saw your website for the first time. Very nice. I'll have to explore it. Is that Wordpress?

 

 

http://www.jr-chiisai.net

 

5 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Wordpress use to offer their service of hosting cheap or free and they kept up patches and revisions along with a suite of trusted and secure plugins. 
 

hosting wp yourself is an exercise in security and work as martijn notes. Unending vulnerabilities popping up and tweaks needed and since it’s now the 800lb gorilla for websites it’s always being poked by bad guys and any site is fair game as they may not care about you but to get onto the server and systems. Many times they pound the little guys just because they think they will be more vulnerable or a place to practice of find new holes without being monitored much. Plug-ins that most users are seduced into adding on are a whole nother layer of security issues to deal with outside wp.

 

I would look at systems they maintain for you to make life easier unless you want to learn some it admin.

 

also look at how your posts are structured and archived, some like wp is all the way to a full website system, others are not all that different from a simple posting system and meant to be more in the moment and not a great archival system for your information.

 

jeff

 

Thanks Jeff, these are more headaches than I have time for right now. I probably won't host myself. Actually, as of right now I'll set the probability at 0. 

 

5 hours ago, disturbman said:

I find tumblr better than Wordpress. Wordpress never seemed to let me format things as I wanted. You just need to find a template you like and perhaps buy it.

 

Another vote for tumbler. 

 

One thing I don't like about Tumbler is that jumble of words under "labels" in the top right. It hurts my head just to look at that. I hope I could choose not to include that. 

 

Eg. Tokyo N and Quinntop

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/

http://quinntopia.blogspot.com/

 

Also, I'm assuming that I'd have no problem migrating my content to my own site if I decided to do that later on. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by gavino200

[serotta1972]

@gavino200 Brad’s Japanese modules are mostly complete and they look spectacular as I’ve had seen them in person - so much little details packed into his modules and there are personal history behind the different scenes.

 

He’s up to date with his home layout. He’s not very active on the forum but contact him, great guy.

[gavino200]

1 minute ago, serotta1972 said:

@gavino200 Brad’s Japanese modules are mostly complete and they look spectacular as I’ve had seen them in person - so much little details packed into his modules and there are personal history behind the different scenes.

 

He’s up to date with his home layout. He’s not very active on the forum but contact him, great guy.

 

This is simply unacceptable. He needs to pack them up, stow them in the attic, and start again. We need fresh blog entries!!!

 

BTW, if I ever "finish" my layout, I plan on lifting out whole sections and starting again. The only constant is change!!

[cteno4]

ahh migration… well it’s mainly copy and paste in a lot of circumstances and what formatting survives is iffy. At times you can do wholesale exports from some systems but then trying to export into a new system will almost always need work. These systems are really not set up for that, mainly just a place to house the content in the moment and a bit of archiving, not made for versatile moving of content around.

 

but creating the words and pictures is the lions share of the work…

 

jeff

[roadstar_na6]

I had quite an active period on tumblr a few years ago and messed around a bit with the html code, nothing fancy and it seems like at least some stuff that was hosted elsewhere (follower- and visitor-counter) doesn't really work anymore, but I took a basic template and modified it a little. If you're good with html you could basically write an entire website there and just have it hosted on tumblr.

Click me

[Martijn Meerts]

1 hour ago, gavino200 said:

 

I just saw your website for the first time. Very nice. I'll have to explore it. Is that Wordpress?

 

 

http://www.jr-chiisai.net

 

Yep, that's self-hosted Wordpress. I have several security addons installed, so for now I haven't had any issues with security. I do constantly get brute force attacks to guess the admin user and password, but the security addons pick that up quite fast. 

 

I used to run it on other systems. Typo3, Drupal, Wordpress with fully custom theme, and now Wordpress with a community theme, since a custom theme was far too much work to keep updated with new versions of Wordpress.

 

Site itself isn't very active, writing decent posts is a lot harder than it looks 😄 I do want to try and be a bit more active on it, eventually.

[chadbag]

I use a hosted WordPress.   (Even though I have a small hosting business -- I have no desire to keep up with a WordPress installation).  

 

I am not an expert on blogging -- I need to be more active on mine.  The place that hosts mine has all sorts of add-ons and stuff and it was reasonably easy to get something going.  I have no idea on the other options, which may be a lot better or easier.

 

[Socimi]

My website is a wordpress one. I personally feel quite comfortable with it.

[disturbman]

3 hours ago, gavino200 said:

One thing I don't like about Tumbler is that jumble of words under "labels" in the top right. It hurts my head just to look at that. I hope I could choose not to include that. 

 

Eg. Tokyo N and Quinntop

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/

http://quinntopia.blogspot.com/

You can mod everything or choose a better theme.

Also, you need to learn about the MultiQuote button. It avoids spamming seven messages in a row 😉

[gavino200]

7 hours ago, disturbman said:

Also, you need to learn about the MultiQuote button. It avoids spamming seven messages in a row 😉

 

Definitely! I've tried to work it out before without success. That's probably an indication that I shouldn't try to host my own blog!.

 

Is there a tutorial somewhere? I also need to learn that thing where you make a link cleverly appear as a word of your choice that appears in a different color and functions just like the link, as if by magic, when clicked!!

 

8 hours ago, Socimi said:

My website is a wordpress one. I personally feel quite comfortable with it.

 

Is that a private website? Or did I choose unwisely when asked to check those two boxes? It won't let me in. Just a nice photo of Tokyo to see.

[disturbman]

For multi-quoting posts, click on the "+" next to "Quote" on all the posts you want to answer to and then click on the "Quote X posts" button in the bottom right-hand corner.
 

8 hours ago, gavino200 said:

I also need to learn that thing where you make a link cleverly appear as a word of your choice that appears in a different color and functions just like the link, as if by magic, when clicked!!

 

For real or you are being sarcastic? It's not obvious without smileys.

If you are not, highlight the part of your text that you want to become magical and then click on the "link" button on your formatting task bar at the top of the editing box - it looks like a chain-link - and copy paste the url in the "URL" box.

[Madsing]

Maybe you can try services such as Weebly https://www.weebly.com/ or Wix https://www.wix.com/

I am using Weebly (https://shin-yukari.weebly.com/), although I have not posted for a while. It's basic, but super easy to use. Just drag and drop elements. No programming at all. I am still on their free plan (with the site name ending with weebly.com). I have never used any other service so I cannot compare...

Marc

 

[roadstar_na6]

2 hours ago, disturbman said:

For multi-quoting posts, click on the "+" next to "Quote" on all the posts you want to answer to and then click on the "Quote X posts" button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Or highlight the part of the post you want to react to and click the "Quote Selection"-button, that appears.

 

2 hours ago, disturbman said:

If you are not, highlight the part of your text that you want to become magical and then click on the "link" button on your formatting task bar at the top of the editing box - it looks like a chain-link - and copy paste the url in the "URL" box.

Or click it directly and it'll give you two textboxes, one for the link and one for how it's supposed to appear.

 

In the past I also used BB-Codes for such things, but this forum is not as cooperative with them as others I found out.

See here: Test. Usually this should lead you to the linked website, but instead it just refreshes this page 😄

 

EDIT: Oh, I just found out how to make it work 😄 Seems like it needs the "https://" prefix: Test2

[url=https://www.google.com]Test[/url]

 

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by roadstar_na6

[gavino200]

Thanks guys. 🙂

[disturbman]

1 hour ago, roadstar_na6 said:

Or highlight the part of the post you want to react to and click the "Quote Selection"-button, that appears.

 

Neat. Didn't know that trick. But that's a bit annoying as you need to scroll back up every time you click "Quote selection". But maybe easier if you want to answer each posts one after the other without pre-selecting everything.

I used to use BB-codes too but I never bothered to find out how they were formatted on the forum. [ quote ] text [ /quote ] works but I never figured out how to manually enter a user name.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by disturbman

[gavino200]

16 hours ago, disturbman said:

For multi-quoting posts, click on the "+" next to "Quote" on all the posts you want to answer to and then click on the "Quote X posts" button in the bottom right-hand corner.
 

 

For real or you are being sarcastic? It's not obvious without smileys.

If you are not, highlight the part of your text that you want to become magical and then click on the "link" button on your formatting task bar at the top of the editing box - it looks like a chain-link - and copy paste the url in the "URL" box.

 

No sarcasm at all.  Click here

 

14 hours ago, roadstar_na6 said:

Or highlight the part of the post you want to react to and click the "Quote Selection"-button, that appears.

 

Or click it directly and it'll give you two textboxes, one for the link and one for how it's supposed to appear.

 

In the past I also used BB-Codes for such things, but this forum is not as cooperative with them as others I found out.

See here: Test. Usually this should lead you to the linked website, but instead it just refreshes this page 😄

 

EDIT: Oh, I just found out how to make it work 😄 Seems like it needs the "https://" prefix: Test2

 

[url=https://www.google.com]Test[/url]

 

 

 

 

Awesome! Click here

 

Edited May 8, 2021 by gavino200

[gavino200]

16 hours ago, Madsing said:

Maybe you can try services such as Weebly https://www.weebly.com/ or Wix https://www.wix.com/

I am using Weebly (https://shin-yukari.weebly.com/), although I have not posted for a while. It's basic, but super easy to use. Just drag and drop elements. No programming at all. I am still on their free plan (with the site name ending with weebly.com). I have never used any other service so I cannot compare...

Marc

 

 

That sounds nice and straight forward. Your site has a very simple and crisp look. I think I'll check out weebly. 

[gavino200]

Thanks for the information and suggestions, everyone. Here's the embrionic new blog.

 

https://ntopia.weebly.com/