Nobody blogs at Otaku Journalist but me. But that doesn’t mean it’s a one woman show. My process is made infinitely easier by a variety of blogging resources I’ve found online.
From hosting to posting, here are a few of the tools I keep going back to for my blog:
The Back End
I pay about $70 every year to Bluehost, and they give me unlimited storage space for photos, digital guides, other blogs, etc. Bluehost also has a one-click install option for my blogging service of choice, WordPress.org.
I’m such a big fan that I’m also a BlueHost affiliate, which means I make money whenever somebody buys BlueHost hosting through a link on my site. And while supporting a company like this can be uncomfortable for some, it hasn’t burned me yet. Look at how quickly support responded to my complaint a few weeks ago!
Blogging platform WordPress comes in two flavors—dot com and dot org. With dot com, you’re hosted on WordPress’s server, but you have a limited amount of storage space and design capabilities. With dot org, you control everything, but you have to host it yourself.
Dot org works for me because I like having total control over the look of my blog, which I tend to redesign every two years or so. I also like being able to organize and store big files, like my digital guides, right inside my blogging platform.
Once, when I accidentally deleted my blog, Bluehost restored it from a backup. But as master of my own domain (literally), I try not to depend on them. I set up my blog with WP-DB-Backup, a plugin I recommend to everyone, to create a weekly restore point.
If I could only have one plugin on my blog, I’d be hard pressed to choose between this one and Askimet (a default spam blocker on WordPress). No matter where you’re blogging, I think it’s a important to think about backing up your blog so the worst doesn’t happen.
Writing and Editing
I mentioned I do all my journalism work in this free Google tool. But I also use it for blogging (and Drive’s folder organization helps me separate work and play). I like that it’s right there in my browser, no matter which Internet-connected device I’m using.
The only thing I don’t like about Google Drive is all the formatting it puts into my blog posts if I just cut and paste them into WordPress. So my method now is Drive → TextEdit (or Notepad on a PC) → WordPress.
This is a relatively new development. I’ve been using this free desktop app to better organize my blogging goals and editorial calendar. Here’s how that’s going so far:
I created an Evernote notebook called Otaku Journalist. In it, I have a note for each month, along with themes, events, and ideas I have for posting those months. I have another note where I store all my links for the Otaku Links series. And then I have another for entering in ideas I have that aren’t fully fleshed out, or I’m not sure what to do with yet. It’s a work in progress, but I’m already feeling more on top of my blogging routine.
My browser says this is one of the six sites I visit the most often, right up there with Gmail and Twitter. But when I’m blogging, I almost always have this site open, the better to select the most perfect possible word for what I’m trying to convey.
My thesaurus use isn’t about finding big words or unusual words, just words I’ve forgotten about after getting in the habit of selecting certain ones while speaking. I’m not trying to impress anyone, just make my words as clear as I can.
Photos and Art
It’s really important to me not to use images on my blog that I don’t have the permission to use. So I love Flickr, which has advanced search options so you only browse Creative Commons licensed art. Google Images has this, too, but when I use it I usually end up selecting results that it scraped from Flickr!
And of course, even if the image’s license doesn’t call for it, I always credit the creator at the bottom of my blog post. Beneath The Tangles is another blog that’s really good at always giving image credit where it’s due.
If you’re wondering how I manipulate my photos into collages, like I did for this 2013 recap post, this free tool is it. Big Huge Labs has a lot of different layouts you can use to transform your photos, some of which I think are tacky, and some that are downright awesome.
I’m certain that I use more tools than these, so list your favorites in the comments and maybe it’ll job my memory. What tools make your blog run?
(Photo by kodomut on Flickr.)