Ever since Moveable Type announced their new licensing plans, many people are looking for alternatives. This link contains a comprehensive chart that compares blogging software and some content management systems (CMS):

http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

Taken from this article at Slashdot.

Dave at mezzoblue has written an article on RSS/XML/Atom that is worth a read.....it is a good introduction to them.

Those of you who, like me, use MT as their blogging software of choice may want to head over to the MT home page. Long story short, they want money and the reaction is not pretty. Just take a look at the TrackBacks from one of their page.

Mostly out of peer pressure, I recently added an RSS feed for my site. My questions are:

a) How many of you are offering some kind of syndication feed, and why or why not? Does it get much use?
b) Do you feel that feeds are useful for photoblogs, and do any of you use a feed aggregator regularly to browse photoblogs? Why?
c) RSS? RSS 2.0? Atom? Something else? Why or why not?
d) Has anyone here been bold enough to try and obtain an ISSN?
e) Is this the future!?!!

What do you Blog WITH when you Blog: Digital or Film

Hello and thanks for reading. Over the past few days we have had some great discussions about hosts and Blog set up 101 here in the Photoblog Tips area. Today I thought I would ask the most basic of basic questions. What do you use to create the images for your photoblogs?

Question:
1) Digital or Film
2) What brand? What model? Technical specs?
3) Lens? “Point and Shoot”? SLR?
4) If Digital, what kind of memory and what size do you use?
5) If Film, what is your favorite film?
6) If Film, how do you digitize? What kind of scanner? Do you use a scanning service (A prolab)?
7) What program for editing? Any program tips? Do you use brightness and contrast adjustments? Hue and Saturation adjustments? Most importantly, why do you make the choices you do? Why film? Why Digital?

Hello again and thanks for reading. A few general questions today about the backbone of your blogs. Don’t be afraid to post links to examples of sites that you really like that aren’t your own either. Inquiring minds want to know!

Question: What size is to big/small for your images? Nothing is worse then running into a photoblog with small images. Details that are clear as day to the photographer are hard to notice to the viewer. However, I know that there are some sites out there with images so large it’s hard to browse their collections. Do we walk a fine line? I know personally I size my images in Photoshop to 72dpi, 504x335 before publishing. I have found this to be an acceptable size…. maybe even a bit on the small size. When is too much too much?

Question: What is your preferred form of navigation for your photoblog? Do you find the “previous next” navigation to be enough? Do you prefer a calendar for navigation? Do you have examples of hybrids of these two navigations? Do you have another way for people to get around your images?

Question: Do you prefer guestbooks, individual comments on each picture, or plain old email for visitor feedback? Is there a preferred way in the photoblogs community for leaving a comment?

Question: How much personally information do you put into your PHOTOblog? Is camera info enough? Shutter speeds? Apertures? Should there be more personal information, ie. A bit about the photographer, in your site? Do you even need camera info? Is the image the “only thing that matters”?

Hello and thanks for reading! I have a burning question for everyone. Many of you have wonderful Moveabletype powered sites that not only look great but perform automatically some of tasks I’ve been doing by hand for over a year now. The only thing that’s kept me coding my site the old fashioned way is hosting. I’ve had a hard time finding a host that I feel comfortable investing my time and money into that can gladly support Moveabletype. I thought it would be fitting if we had a little discussion here in the “Blogging Tips” category of blog.photoblogs.org about what hosts people feel comfortable recommending for their Moveabletype needs.

Question: What host do you use for Moveabletype and would you recommend it to someone looking to incorporate Moveabletype into their photo blog?

Reference: http://moveabletype.org

We have some stinking PC's at my office and it dawned on me tht some folks might not know about the joys of tabbed browsing, and how it can help with your blog browsing.

Go and download yourself Firefox or Mozilla

Point to Photoblogs.org

Got to the Top 100 or Hot 100

Then control-click on 25, 50, or even all 100 links. Each site will open up in a new tab and you can then decide what you like (to bookmark or add to your favorites or whatever)

One of the most consistent suggestion from yesterday's post was to change the "site of the month" into a "site of the week". If anything, the last two posts on this blog are indicative that good "middle-rated" photoblogs may be in for an increase in exposure.

Traffic is the ultimate currency of the blogging world. Like most new bloggers, I have tried various strategies to bring more people to my site. By keeping an eye on my logs, it becomes obvious that some work much better than others.

• Link your site the photoblogs.org (duh!): The trick here is not to do it when your new blog has only 1 or 2 pictures. You want to have something to show on those few days that you are linked on the front page.

• Participate in photo memes. Theme Thursday and Photo Friday, to name only the big-2, are great places to expose your site and to discover new ones.

• Encourage exploration. People visit dozens of photoblogs each day and your template should make their "job" easier. My first template was overly complex. A redesing placed previous/next arrows that remain at a constant place as you click from one entry to the next. As a consequence, visitors from memes would sometime link up and down through numerous postings.

• Posting a series on a local event can bring in a spike in traffic. My first big spike came from a series on the Montreal Festival of Lights that was subsequently picked up by a local newspaper.

• Post your best work on photography websites. Personnally I like PhotographyBLOG and MacDesktops but can find some amazing stuff at Photoblink and Shutterbugs.

• Registering on the numerous blog directories does NOT work. It brings in traffic, but most of it is the creepy crawler kind.

• Have a business card. Mine simply has the name and address of my photoblog. In addition, these are extremely useful when you photograph people or to placate a nosy security guard.

• Comments. I have saved the most important for last. I have probably gathered more return visitors simply by leaving comments on their own photoblogs.

Oh yeah, publishing great photography helps too