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No need to say that blogging is not a fashion. For some, it’s even a way of living. As such, you’ll find a thousand tools and applications designed to make the job a lot easier. Of course, it’s better to choose only a couple of programs that work for you and stick to them rather than using different applications, but it’s always nice to know the options. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best alternatives for writing, finding and using images and, finally, the best CMS software to create your blog.

Writing

Far from what is commonly believed, to write you don’t need inspiration. You don’t even need something new to say. You just need a distraction-free environment, and some idea of what to write about. The best way to start writing is doing it; with practice, you’ll become an expert. Now, for tools, there are many options. One of the best blog writing pieces of software out there is Microsoft Live Writer (http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com). You can write, edit, add images and post directly from the software. It’s a very complete editor, ready to set up various blog accounts so that when you’re ready to post, just click on publish and that’s it.

Another great tool to help you write is ScribeFire (http://www.scribefire.com). This is actually a Firefox extension. When installed and launched, a text editor will emerge from the bottom (default, you can change that) of the browser, so that you can browse and write at the same time. It’s great for quick blogging, and you can also configure various accounts so that when ready, you can publish the post directly without getting into your account.

A great way of getting your content organized for writing is mapping out your ideas. There are lots of apps to do this tidily: the best are FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) and MindMeister (http://www.mindmeister.com). The latter is web-based, so you can get into the account from other computers and continue mapping out your concepts wherever you are.

Images

No blog is really complete without the appropriate images. Good thing you can find almost anything on the Web, but if you want free, good quality images, you’d better go to the right places. Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) is the most obvious one. This social network for image -and now, video- sharing is a great ally when looking for great pictures for your blog. If you don’t want to have any legal issues concerning rights, go directly to the Creative Commons section and just download your heart out!

Zemanta (http://www.zemanta.com) is also an effective image finder. You can browse picture by tags and content, and also integrates nicely with the previously mentioned ScribeFire editor. Another free image resource is Stock Exchange: it’s free service has excellent images of about anything you can think of.

CMS

CMS stands for Content Management System. It’s software designed for web creation and blogging. Effective for both corporate and personal blogs, CMS are the choice for professional bloggers that want more customizable options than Blogger (https://www.blogger.com/start?pli=1) or WordPress.com (http://wordpress.com). CMS require hosting, thus you’ll need to pay a hosting service to get one, but there are some services that are really affordable and the difference is spectacular. Explore what WordPress.org (http://wordpress.org), Drupal (http://drupal.org) or Joomla (http://www.joomla.org) have to offer and stick to one. You won’t regret it.

Written by Josh Downing. You can find more of his articles at http://www.englishlci.com