Jamdo Marketing Blog

I recently had the pleasure of taking posession of a new computer and once my excitement had died down at not having to tolerate my old pile of junk any longer, I realised I now had the task of setting things up again, so that I had all the tools at my disposal for blogging.

Now, I like things to go smoothly and easily. If I find a piece of software that is even a slight improvement, I will dump my existing setup like a hot potato. But I found, after getting my new computer, that I actrually quite liked the setup I had for browsing and blogging.

And so I went hunting for all of my old software and plugins. This is how I did it and why I wanted to keep each piece of the puzzle the way it was.

Firefox

If you are not using Firefox yet, then you are a fool. It is SO much better than IE that it’s difficult to describe. I love tabbed browsing so that I can switch between web pages and look at another web page while I am waiting for a slow page to load somewhere else. A few other browsers also have tabbed browsing, but at the moment my love affair with Firefox continues. Another reason I like it is because there are a lot of plugins that I like that can be used with Firefox. Get it here.

Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar is a handy little piece of kit to have if you are into stuff like blogging and online marketing. The most handy things on the toolbar are the Page Rank display that will let you know the PR of the page you are currently visiting and also the “info” button that will let you easily search the backlinks and similar sites to the page you are currently on. This is useful in giving you a quick snapshot of your competitor’s sites and even how your own sites are doing in Google. And finding out is very quick. Get the Google toolbar for Firefox here.

Search Status Plugin

This is a great plugin that lets you know the Alexa ranking (and Google PR) for the site you are visiting. One of the downfalls of Firefox is that Alexa has not developed a toolbar specifically for it, but this plugin takes care of that. The Alexa ranking of the site is displayed in teh toolbar at teh bottom of your screen in a status bar (very similar to the Google PR display) and you can find the exact Alexa rank of the page you are visiting by simply scrolling over the icon in your toolbar. While Alexa isn’t super accurate, it is a good indication of popular sites and is therefore once again, handy for spying on the competition or for checking out the progress of your own sites. There is also a handy function to give you various search data from the main search engines regarding the site you are on. That includes backlinks, indexed pages etc etc - again, extremely handy for Geeks like us. Get the Plugin here.

Blogger Web Comments Plugin

This is a neat little plugin that was developed by Glen Murphy of Google. It is a little icon that sits in the browser toolbar at the bootom of your screen and when somebody has blogged about the site you are on, it displays a little “dialog box” icon (or several if there is more than one comment). It is extremely handy for finding out what the blogopshere is saying about a hot news item or your own blog. It works on any page too (not just blogs). A great way to surf in the internet if you are researching a particular niche. It’s only drawback is that at the moment, it only displays blogs powered by blogger or that show up on Google Blog search - it would be really handy if they added Technorati blogs too, but it’s still a great tool.

Performancing for Firefox

I have written enough about PFF on previous occassions for most of you to know what it is, but if you are still not sure there here is a brief rundown. PFF is a blogging tool that allows you to blog straight from your browser. Just click on the little icon that sits in your toolbar at teh bottom of the screen and a blogging platform will pop up. It allows you to drag and drop pics from the web straight into your post or upload them to your own site. You can set it up to post on mutiple blogs too. In fact you can do almost everything and more that most blogging platforms allow you to do. It is awesome and every blogger should use it. Get it over at performancing.com

GreaseMonkey Script for CoComment

If you use CoComment to track your blog conversations (and you should be both contributing to other people’s blogs AND tracking those conversations) then this is a handy little script that you can install to automatically track. It will detect when you are on a blog and will automatically send your comment to CoComment if you make one (don’t worry, it will ask first). It just makes the whole process a lot simpler and quicker. Download it directly here.

Closing Thoughts

These are my “must haves” for blogging. I love them all and think most bloggers would get a lot of value out of them. I strongly encourage you to check them out.

But I am sure there are plenty of other great plugins and free software for us bloggers. If you have any suggestions or favourites, please feel free to leave a comment or link!

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, plugins, firefox, Google

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