Thingamablog Blog

Blogging about Blogging

I have recently been thinking of starting a blog and so I went looking for blogging tools. I found one called Thingamablog that surprised me and captured my imagination. Thingamablog is different from other blogging tools because it works entirely on the client side, namely all of the blog data is stored on my local computer instead of on a server.

Most of the blog tools out there are installed on the server computer that is hosting your blog. You enter your blogs using some sort of GUI and the entries go across the internet into a MySQL database on the server. When a visitor lands on your blog, the server fetches the information out of the database, converts it into html code, and sends it to the web browser across the internet. This is called a "server side" blog because the formatting work is done on the server.

Thingamablog stores the blog entries in its own database on your local computer, and when you post them, the .html pages are formatted locally and sent up to the server via the internet. Then, when a visitor lands on your blog, the server simply sends the plain .html files to the user's browser. This is called a "client side" blog because the formatting work is done on the client, your PC.

Thingamablog is a client side blogging tool.

While this may seem like a picky deail, it has significant effects on how you use the blogging tool. There are tradeoffs to consider when decicing which tool you use, and here they are:

Server Side Benefits:

• You only send up your entires to the blog, not all of the resulting .html code. This is a very quick upload.
• The pages are created dynamically, so you can change styles and formats without long uploads. Making changes to a client side blog will cause a lot of files to be uploaded (maybe the entire blog).
• The database is automatically backed up by the server service (you hope).
• Comment capabilities are automatically included in your blog. With a client side blogger you must jump through hoops to implement comments

Client Side Benefits:

• You do not have to set up MySQL and Perl/PHP systems on the server. Any server will do.
• You retain complete control over your data... it is on your local PC.
• To move to a different server, point the blog to the new server and click on Publish. Moving a server side blog could be difficult or impossible because all of your data is on the server
• If the server crashes and the service loses your server side blog.... oh well.... tough luck.. you lost it.

Being somewhat of a computer geek and control freak, I really like the idea of having all of my blog located on my own personal PC. That way I can back it up myself and move it around or whatever I want to do with it and not depend on someone else's computer.

So I decided to give Thingamablog a try, and I spent some time figuring out how to make the best use of the tool. Then it came to me that the best subject I could do for my first blog was how to use the Thingamablog tool. And that is how this blog came about.

I will not repeat the excellent tutorials that are already out there, so for the basics, go to the Thingamablog web site. I plan on describing things that I have discovered myself about how this tool works.

Check back later for some tips on using Thingamablog.