Blogger vs WordPress? I'll take Blogger, you might not.

HA! Right there in the title, I give it away. There is no CLEAR winner with the WordPress vs Blogger debate.

Brad, AKA kPulsed has created a very nice Comparison chart that I'm tempted to steal and post here, but... Well,  someone already asked, and he didn't really say "OK".  I don't blame him. But it IS Really GOOD. It's got that Lovely "Long Tail" or is it Long Trail? That an excellent blob, er Blog Post should have.

Alright. Are you still here? You didn't get lost on that chart? Did you?  But there were a few other items or concerns that weren't listed or mentioned on his chart that I'd like to go over.  Mainly, what if you wanted to host your own blog, on a shared hosting site like GoDaddy or 1and1.com. His chart mainly goes over what you can expect for the free services of Blogger.com or Wordpress.Org.

If you haven't noticed. You're reading this on a Blogger Blog. With it's own glitzy domain name.  That Glitzy and handy, domain name cost me $10 bucks a year, and I registered it through the Blogger Dashboard.  It was pretty simple.  It also comes with it's own a handy Google Sites website, if one needs it. But you can get those for free anyway too.  The Google Site, Site (oh man, I'm going to get delirious if I have to keep saying Site, Site) fills the need hosting oddball files, like a handy Linux Reference Card.PDF Or simply a Picture.ZIP. Of course YouTube hosts its onw video files, and Archive.org can host other media files for you too, if you wish.

• You don't have to FTP to the site with some kludgey FTP client.
• You don't have to update your Blog or it's Widgets every other day
• You don't have to worry if your Shared Hosting server neighbors are sucking up tons of bandwidth, and handing out 404 error's to your site's visitors. 
• You've got the power of Google Servers.
• You don't even have to purchase a domain to get all of these benefits. 

Blogger is getting a little more love from Google, and they're adding many more features as time moves along. 

Now from an open source point of view. WordPress IS Open Source, and Blogger is not. I doubt if it ever will be. But either platform will work well. It all depends on if one works better for you then the other.  But for me, I like the ease of use, and stability of Blogger. 

Personalize Your Blogger.com Favicon

I was wondering the other day, if could change my Favicon on blogger. I was please to find out I could with a post over at Happy Blogging.  His Post was fairly clear, but thought that I'd do one with my spin on it.  As Intend to do a few Blogger related posts in the near future.

It's fairly simple if you know your way around in Blogger and HTML. If not, I hope this post helps.

First, you're going to want to have a favicon already posted somewhere on the web.  Preferably on a site that is yours. :)  You CAN easily upload the icon in .PNG format to a Blogger Post, as blogger won't allow you to upload a .ICO file, the Microsoft extension name for an icon. If you have a Google Sites account, you can upload your image there instead of Blogger. But for the sake of this post, lest say your image is located at:

http://linuxnuts.org/files/wanker.png

With your favorite text editor, well, ok, actually I don't care if its YOUR favorite text editor, but with a text editor that won't "hold" all the HTML code and formating, if you were to cut and paste to it. Replace the "real" place your image is where the {image url} is in the code below.  I find that the Find and Replace function comes in real handy at this point in my Text Editor. 

The HTML Link Code:

<link href='{image url}' rel='shortcut icon'/>
<link href='{image url}' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>
<link href='{image url}' rel='icon'/>
<link href='{image url}' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>

So this should give you something like this in your text editor:

<link href='http://linuxnuts.org/files/wanker.png' rel='shortcut icon'/>
<link href='http://linuxnuts.org/files/wanker.png' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>
<link href='http://linuxnuts.org/files/wanker.png' rel='icon'/>
<link href='http://linuxnuts.org/files/wanker.png' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>


Oh, and Happy Blogger also has a Favicon Link Generator that you can use.

Then, you'll want to go to your blogger dash board, such as the one displayed below. Dashboard > Design > Edit HTML 

I do a CTRL-F to search for the </head> tag  while I'm in Chrome and place the code directly above it. As in the example. 

And that will give the results like I've got here on Pimping the Penguin. No more Orange Blogger Icon for your Blog.  

If you Change your template, you stand a chance of loosing your modifications, so keep that in mind. 

Blog on....! 

From The Blender Guru | How to Make a Realistic Asteroid in Blender

How to Make a Realistic Asteroid in Blender


Hey FOSSY and FREE fans... Andrew Price has done an excellent job over at Blender Guru with a Tutorial ( That's another word for "How To"  for you people in Adobe Land" )

In his words "This tutorial will demonstrate the importance of the displacement
modifier and how using it can produce amazing results in just a few
clicks."

So grab a cup of coffee (using a Photoshop CD as a coaster, of course)  and watch this video, and maybe even fire up a copy of Blender!

And Keep Pimpin' that Blender FOSS Andrew!! 

Yugma = Linux Friendly Videoconferencing Software

https://www.yugma.com/

Hey there. I keep hearing people talk about Go To Meeting, but Go To Meeting doesn't support Linux users. I figured that even though I haven't used Yugma (and don't ask me how you're supposed to say it, maybe it needs a little better branding, mabey?..)  I'd post a screen shot, and put it here, so I can easily find the link to them again.

I'm still trying to find the time to do the 100 things that I've got on my mental list to do for all my blogs. - One thing that I was thinking about for here, was to do some Blogger Tutorials, along with some Google Love...

Panoramio - Photos by RandyNose

Panoramio - Photos by RandyNose No, no Photo's yet.

Hey, I just created a PanOramio account. I've got to check this out. And need to tell some of my local Photoblogger friends about it.. :)

A Penguin to Pimp Linux Mint

Hey, I was browsing around and didn't find a quick link for a Linux Mint Tux, or Penguin. So I mashed up some images with GIMP and created the following image. One is a larger one, the second is more an icon sized image, such as making a Favicon.ico for your blog. - Notice that my Blogger Blog now has a Favicon that isn't just the plain old Orange icon... :)

And if you want to know how to change your Favicon for your Blogger Blog, 

go here:

"A step by step guide on how to change the default blogger favicon to your own 

favorite icon." 

http://hapiblogging.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-change-favicon-in-blogger-in-xml.html

[Whoop, note to self, put the LARGE image first for the feeds to find...]

Google Analytics, and what good is it to you?

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Why would you want to use Google Analytics? - I'm checking it out, and it proves that my sites are woefully lacking in outside interest. - Something I'm wondering on how to fix.  But one has to know what's broken before they fix it.  This is what this site can help you with, and they've got a few cool tools there to target what area's that you want to promote, or at the very least, it'll let you know what posts you've created that have brought traffic to your site.

This is what they say about their site.. 

"Google Analytics provides powerful tracking for anyone with a web presence, whether it be a small hobby website or a giant online enterprise. It's one of the most powerful web analytics solutions on the market - and it's free for anyone to use"

I can tell you from first hand experience, that just because you've gotten a URL that's been "Slash Dotted" it won't mean instant traffic.  First it's got to be a topic that captures a lot of people's interest, and brings them back. And it has to be well presented. 

So, if you're a blogger just trying to figure out what's going on with your site, these tools are great. Blogger has some built in features, that are quite useful,  this is more of those features but on steroids.   

Happy Blog, Navel gazing!

R_