Blogsy + iPad + Blogger = Good Mobile Blogging

I've been on the search for a really good personal and small business website strategy and accompanying toolset. I think I've settled on a pretty much hassle-free system.

Goals

• Robust. It needs to not go down, and to be able to handle whatever traffic comes its way. I also need to be able to do manual backups as well as exports to formats I can use elsewhere.
• Contemporary design easy to modify without knowing too much framework or CSS code. This includes responsive layouts and decent sliders.
• Free hosting. I don't want to pay anything per month for hosting if I don't have to.
• Custom branding + domains. Important to not promote others brands as well as have a custom domain.
• Not HOSTED by me. This means I don't want to have to worry about hackers selling their Viagra on my site. Unfortunately, self-hosted WordPress sites need to be updated often to prevent this, so WordPress is OUT.
• It would be great if the tools could use Markdown, which is a simple to learn system for formatting type.
• Full toolset for posting on an iPad. I use my iPad much more than my desktop for this sort of thing as it's much more contemplative and I do most my writing and browsing on it.

The Solution

Blogger

Awhile back I stumbled on Blogger as my choice for a web hosting provider. It's owned by Google, and they're plenty reliable for me. Plus, because they are hosted by Google, Blogger sites receive premium search indexing, which is a bonus. There's plenty of contemporary and responsive templates available plus designers who can customize them. In fact I've commissioned my own framework, which I hope to introduce soon. And, it's a full CMS, which means it's easy to manage all the content.

Blogsy

A real peach of a blog post editor for the iPad. It can upload images, edit posts from your favorite blogging platform, and even supports creating posts in Markdown (though I wish I could go back and forth between the blog post and the MD). Finally!