One last post on my Posterous
I started out with Posterous 6 months back mainly to just try it out. After inactivity for about 3 months, I started posting regularly here. I have tried different kinds of posts in this period - with photos, code listings, even other type of attachments. But after my last post I was rather disappointed with Posterous and decided to move on to some other blogging platform. So, this is the last post here and I want to present my observations. likes and dislikes about Posterous.
Likes:
Ability to post via email, though I discovered even WordPress can do that but it gives you a rather cryptic sendto address.
Import feature to import your posts from a previous blog, many platforms are supported. (Again a standard feature on WordPress and many other blogging platforms).
The Gallery feature - when you attach photos with the post email, they appear as a nice enough photo gallery at the beginning of your post.
Scribd support - when you attach a pdf to your post it shows up in your blog as a cool embedded document powered by Scribd (though it still requires Flash support).
Those cool drop downs for About, Tags and Search at the top powered by M8 theme I am using.
Dislikes:
It doesn’t produce decent (X)HTML automatically for a post sent through mail.
Same goes for code listings, there is no way that I know to tell posterous what I am posting through email is a part of code and should come between a
<code>tag pair. And appending<code>tag pair for each in line command within normal text is a pain if done manually.The web interface and toolbar is also quite basic and features very less functionality.
In my last post I had to attach a tar.gz archive containing some LaTeX source files. I was happy to see it appeared on the blog with a nice icon and friendly “Click here to download” link. But I discovered there was no way I could update that file (or upload another one instead) as the web interface doesn’t allow that type of file. I wondered why does it accept the same file through email posting though.
Due to my complicated blogging requirements, now I have shifted to WordPress (my favorite) again, though, this time on wordpress.com instead of my own domain. You can visit the new blog at http://k4rtik.wordpress.com and all my previous posts are available there as well.
My concluding remarks for Posterous:
Posterous is a good service for basic blogging but they have a long way to go to compete with solutions like WordPress or Blogger. At its current state, I feel it’s immature for my blogging needs.