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9.9.06

New UK blogging platform with Terapad

Stuart Bruce has made a comment on Terapad - a new blogging platform which offer teh facility to hang web pages off your blog.

Stuart says: "I've only just signed up for the 30 day free trial, but first impressions are favourable (or should I say favorable as I think it's a UK company angling its pitch for the US market)."

What I like:
Easy to sign up and doesn't require a credit card for the free trial (I hate those as I always forget to cancel)
Initial templates are actually attractive, although obviously will look like templates as everyone uses them
Appears to be very feature rich, although I haven't had time to study them all yet

What I don't like:
Terrible launch press release, these guys apparently don't have a budget for professional public relations support
"Once your free trial runs out, your site will be deleted." Unless you get a massive time window to 'reclaim/pay' then this is terrible - far better to lock it for 90 days so you can't edit it or add posts.
Pitching just to the USA - it's right for UK tech companies to look to the US first (much bigger market), but I feel Terapad needs to give a bit more of a nod to the UK.
No integration with FeedBurner (particularly bad as they make it so easy to use Google Analytics for visits its a shame you can't do the same for your feed).

Thanks Stuart.

I've struggled with Typepad in the past and quickly abandoned it for Blogger. I understand that feedburner is on the way and RSS is already fully integrated. I set this up this morning will see (Ian Green's Media Blog) how it goes. There is another blogger platform called Joomla which looks interesting too.
One thing I did struggle with was that RSS Reader didn't like some of the code.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ian, I thought your new blog looked great but I can't figure out how to comment on it - sorry if I'm being really thick.

News Update said...

Hi Linda,

Still trying to get my head around Terapad. If you revisit you can now add comment to the Wensleydale post.
When you set it up you can arrange a whole range of features from:
Extra Web Pages (under content)
A picture gallery
A shop - PayPal ecommerce application
An events page and calendar
And other stuff.

When I set it up I didn't activate the forum whatsit but that is now enabled.

I've had a long email chat with CEO and he's hoping for great things but I think he needs to refine it further. As British company I would like to see it succeed - but as Jimmy Goldsmith said: "When you see a bandwagon - it's too late."

All a bit academic as this stage as are we are thinking of launching a corporate blog - which might supercede this and my existing Blogger site. The new Wensleydale blog has generated a lot of interest among companies lookintto do the same - but have neither the time nor technical knowledge. So we might be selling this as a service.

Anonymous said...

Just a quick note Ian to let you know Feedburner is in now. Cheers!