Blog Goat Details

I realized that I didn’t give much in the way of information about Blog Goat when I announced it the other day. So, here ya go…

Blog Goat generates the correct file names, and stores all the necessary settings in the registry. Your FTP password is encrypted in the registry — it’s not great encryption, but it’s better than plain text. Entries can be saved, then uploaded whenever you want. Soon, I plan to make Blog Goat available to download from here. I don’t know that anyone would actually want to use it, but if they do, they can have it.

I’ve already started making a list of features I want to put in 2.0. Settings for multiple weblogs, uploading images, dragging & dropping links and/or images automatically generating HTML, downloading entries for editing. Plus, there are a lot of little things I need to do to make it cleaner and friendlier — like providing status messages when it is uploading the files. All in good time…

There is also more I would like to do with News Goat. I’d like to add some pages (about, downloads, etc.). An RDF feed would be cool, for those who are in to the whole syndicated headlines thing. An online “Blog Goat” interface and the ability to have comments on entries will probably wait until the database version of News Goat. And, of course, I would eventually like to learn enough about graphic design to come up with a cool looking layout.

In other news, our Mensa website has been down for a few days now. So far, I haven’t been able to contact the host to find out what’s going on. We’ll see…