The excellent Pro Blogger has a post up asking reader's to list their top 5 blogging tools. I started to write my list in the comments, but I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make it a full blog post.
So here are my top 5 blogging tools:
(1) WordPress
WordPress is the best blogging platform for my money because it is easy to use, full featured and completely open source (free!). Make sure to install Akismet to help with comment spam and WP-Cache to help deal with the Slashdot/Digg/Fark affect. Do those two things and you are golden.
Even in the latest version of WordPress, it is annoying/difficult to write longer posts within the online HTML editor. Windows Live Writer is a good piece of blog editing software you install locally to write and manage your blog posts. It allows you to post your blog entries without ever logging in to the WordPress interface. Full review here.
(3) Feedburner
We are currently hosting our RSS feed on Feedburner, and also use it for stats tracking and management of our email alerts. By hosting our RSS on Feedburner, we are able to measure how many subscribers we have and also add goodies to our feed (Digg buttons, number of comments, etc.).
(4) Clicky
Clicky is a great tool for tracking blog statistics. A full review is here. I've also heard that Statcounter and Mint are excellent but haven't tried them out yet.
(5) MyBlogLog
We have just been using this for a month or so and I continue to think the blog-based social networking tool is a great way to build a community around your blog. Full review is here.
What are your favorite tools?
Sign up today to have our latest posts delivered straight to your inbox.
