I've been on this new blog since July, but I've realized that I never gave a full review of blogging with
Powerblogs. I thought I'd do this now, prompted by the fact that Donald Sensing of
One Hand Clapping is
considering switching to it. What initially drew me to Powerblogs was that they were willing to transfer all my old posts to the new blog, and, if I wanted it, they'd transfer the old style as well. It takes them a week or two to do that, depending on what else they're busy with, so I had that time to play with the blog and by the time I was finished, I didn't need them to transfer the style. The organization of the blog's stylesheets made it pretty easy to set up the blog's look and feel exactly how I wanted it. They charge a bit extra, $50, to do the old post transfer, although there's now an option to do the transfer yourself. I haven't had a reason to try it. The normal price for hosting is $5 a month, although there are higher levels for blogs that get more throughput and storage space. The old post transfer worked well, but one problem is that the links between posts weren't updated. If you go to my pre-transfer posts (
for example), and click on a link to an older post, you'll end up at my old blog. That isn't a big problem, since my old blog is still up and running, but if you're transferring your URL address to a new location, all those links will become defunct. I keep meaning to update them, but it'll be a lot of work to do so.
The interface is powerful, although there are a few points where it would be easier to use. One of the things I like are the buttons that let you quickly link to recent posts. What I don't like, which may be a peculiarity of my web browser (I use Netscape 7.2), is that every time I use that button, or any of the buttons that insert HTML code, I scroll to the top of the post I'm writing, which can be a long way with some of my posts. Post writing is not WYSIWYG, and it helps to know your HTML.
I particularly like some of the special features. Powerblogs is always adding features, and they are very well handled. It didn't have Categories when I first joined, but they work quite well now. But everybody has that. What I really like is post chaining, one of the more brilliant things I've seen. I tend to write series of posts, and originally developed an Old Post/New Post scheme to connect the series together. At the top of a post would be a line starting with
Old Post:, which linked to old posts in the series, and at the bottom would be the
New Post: line, which linked to later posts in the series. I still use this scheme occasionally, especially when I think someone shouldn't read the current post before reading the older ones, but not often. It's easier to use post chaining, which connects posts in a series together automatically, putting the full list at the bottom of
each post in the series. And best of all, you can display the
whole series on one page, in
chronological order, as opposed to the normal
reverse chronological order common in blogs. (I included links to a couple of examples.) But my favorite feature is post scheduling, which I use all the time. Due to the simple problem that I can't blog from work (or, more accurately, really, really shouldn't), I write all my posts the day before, then schedule them to go up at pre-determined times during the day. So if you notice I'm always a day behind on the news, that's why. I've also used it when I know I won't be blogging for a while, scheduling posts to go up while I'm gone, just so the blog isn't abandoned.
Finally, the best thing about Powerblogs is their customer service. If I run into a problem and e-mail them, I get a response right away, and it's usually fixed in a few hours. More than once, I've asked about a feature that I thought would be really helpful, and it's added within a couple of weeks. They even read my blog and notice some of the nitpicky things I mention, and letting me know when they've fixed them. I get regular e-mails asking me how things are going. Now, if I got the traffic of
Dean Esmay or
Joe Gandelman, maybe I'd expect this kind of service, but I'm a lower tier blogger. I get 100-200 visits a day,
most of them from Google searches (I have no idea why, but Google loves me). I have a lot of respect for folks who give this kind of customer service to someone like me.
Update: I've added a link to Powerblogs' website, since Doc asked about it in the comments.
