Starting a blog? 5 tools you must know about

Are you planning to start a blog? If you aren't you should be, in today's world you should have a blog, you absolutely can't ignore the enormity of the World Wide Web. I know I did not do much of a job convincing you but do give it a try, it is loads of fun. I would suggest starting with www.Blogger.com or www.spaces.live.com. Both are fairly easy, blogger is a basic blog while Live is more than a blog. It totally depends on what you prefer.

There might be others who are more enthusiastic and want to host their own blog. If you are one of those, here are 5 tools / services you should definitely know about. If you plan on using Blogger/ Live Spaces, some of these may still help you.

•  Drupal - Drupal is a Php based CMS (Content management software). I have tried a few and by far this is the easiest. Other you may consider are Mambo, Joomla and DotNetNuke. If you want a basic blog, there is word press too but I would suggest Drupal. It has a low learning curve and modern features. There are a lot of modules available for Drupal and requires very little administration.

• Windows Live Writer - This is one of the coolest tool and you are likely to use this the most while maintaining a blog. It makes publishing a post to your blog very easy. It is not dependant on the software you use for your blog and works with almost any (E.g., Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Community Server, etc). If you are using Drupal, I have published a post on how to make Windows Live Write work with Drupal. Check it out.

• Google AdSense - Once you have a blog, you may want to make some money out of it. Even if that is not the primary motive, it may help offset some cost needed to maintain one. There are many ad providers but I recommend AdSense as it is good and if you search, you will almost always get a module that works with your blog software.

• FeedBurner - This is a great tool if you would like to track who all read your blog through syndicated feeds and easily integrates with any blog software.

• OpenID - Lastly, I would like to say make your Blog use 21st century technology. Enable users to comment using existing IDs. I blogged about OpenID but in short, this would enable the users to log-in using IDs they may already have and won't require them to create a new account on your blog site. I almost never comment if I am asked to create an account. I understand accounts are needed to protect from spam. OpenID lets to archive both purposes.

There are more tools you might need for specific needs but this should get you well on your way. Happy Blogging!