Another blogging platform (based on a Drupal engine, but highly customized) that’s worth checking out is Mo’time. Disclaimer: I’m the project leader of Mo’time.

I won’t go into the whole spiel, but would simply say it’s very user-friendly, yet integrates advanced features as instant messaging and folksonomies into the platform. I invite the multi-blogger that lives within you to have a look. Oh, it’s free.

I have used MT and Blogger in the past, and Nucleus is much more extensible, supports multiple blogs, and of course… is free.

Nucleus is written in PHP, and uses MySQL as it’s backend.

If you have outgrown Blogger, I’d recommend TypePad heartily. Happy blogging!

Perhaps it sounds complicated, but the best analogy for multi-blogging is ‘blogging ala newsletter style.’ We all are familiar with newsletter programs that allow the author/publisher to generate one newsletter (perhaps weekly) and as the newsletter goes out each week, the software personalizes the content to each subscribing reader. Most newsletter software programs can do much more personalization and targeting than the publisher employs, yet even in it’s most common usage, you have a publisher writing ONE content stream and that content is targeted to its readership.

If any of the above made sense to you, you’re likely thinking now… what software will do this for the potential multi-blogger? I know of only two ways to achieve this at the moment and below are my recommendations:

1) You can set-up multiple blogs at most major blog providers. For example, Blogger.com allows (according to their FAQ) “unlimited blogs.” Most blog providers also provide the ability to email posts into their system for instant blog entry. For example, Blogger.com gives you a unique personal email address (for each blog) that a blogger can email content to. With this in mind, a multi-blogger could use any newsletter emailing program that has HTML sending capabilities and allows for ‘variable’ substitutions (you know, where you can do things like: Dear %%fname%% %%lname%%, and have the newsletter software substitute targeted content for the %%variables%%).

This approach is a bit limiting and cumbersome, but it works well. You can now enter all your unique blog emails into the newsletter program (as if they were subscribers) and set up targeted variables associated with each of your multiple blogs. Now, each week (or whenever you post) you enter your original blog content (like it were a newsletter) into the program, set-up variables to personalize each email and click the send button.

Amazing but true, all your ‘subscribers’ (that is, all your blogs) get personalized emails with you blog content ready to post. In fact, most blogs will post this instantly and you’re off to the multi-blogging races.

2) The better method for those wanting more control and less ‘jerryrigging’ is to use software built specifically for multi-blogging. Currently, I only know of one such software. It’s called Blog-zilla, and can be found at, http://www.Blog-zilla.com There is a news story on this software here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb260055.php

Some feel the promotional style used in marketing this software attracts the wrong type (content thieves, plagiarist, and cheats), but without question, it is NOT for those type, quite the contrary. In fact, subscribers to this web-based multi-blogging software are screened, trained and monitored. Blog-zilla eats spammers for lunch

For those wondering how I know so much about all this multi-blogging. Well, let’s put it this way… I’m Dan Hollings, Blog-zilla’s Zookeeper!

Happy multi-blogging.

On top of all that, Anthony– the dude who invented Squarespace– handles tech support and is available to his customers. Try getting a hold of the guys who run most blogging companies.

In the interest of full disclosure: The Squarespace link I provided is a referral link. You see, Squarespace pays one month’s hosting for anyone referred by me. I’m sold on Squarespace.

Check it out if you get a chance.

Thanks,
Frank Gruber
Somewhatfrank.com