Actually this is more of a WordPress vs posterous..
1. Posterous is a closed source platform, if you don’t get closed vs open source yet then I recommend you do some reading because open source is the corner stone of 99% of the successful publishing platforms used long term on the internet.
2. You can’t export your posterous blog to an xml file, you can get your blog posts but you cant export comments etc. so if you move you will lose data.
3. Did you even know you can post to a wordpress blog via email? Just saying… Cos y’know most people don’t…
4. Applications have a natural growth pattern, posterous will eventually want to compete with the big boys and in turn will become a complex beast which is probably the reason you avoided other blog platforms..
5. You can’t assign plugins or widgets ie the fantastic CBBC news feed, Primary Games Arena or BrainPOP UK widgets.
Basically posterous is a short term solution that might get you started blogging but I warn you not to invest too much time into it because when you decide to move away you are going to lose data.
I believe in a) open source and b) teachers using long term solutions to problems as to reduce head ache in the future. So yep, I’m biased as I run a wordpress blog site but I also feel like no one has proper addressed this issue. It is really easy to move from posterous to a wordpress blog provider such as PrimaryBlogger, just use the import tool.
I would have to totally disagree with you here. Teachers are fundamentally busy people and I can post via email direct from smart phone or tablet sound, video, text or photos directly to my posterous blog. It makes blogging a no brainer for staff who are not technically proficient.
Like you I like open source and have appreciated and used Moodle for years but I will always opt for what works quickest and easiest and I am a techie teacher. Setting up a basic Posterous blog takes 5 mins.
When you subscribe kids to it it sends them email notifications of the posts. They only have to reply to the email to comment on the post.
It’s really easy to set yourself as teacher up as gatekeeper as well.
It’s not complicated and has less plug ins but for the ease of multimedia embedding nothing beats Posterous.
Hi John,
I’ve been using posterous since it started (along with a few other blogs engines, open & closed). Early on I blogged a lot evangelising posterous, http://johnjohnston.info/blog/tag/posterous and still use it a lot even though I am not so keen on some later developments. I think I influenced a few folk to use posterous so a few thoughts in its defence;-)
Posterous does a few things really well including: simplifies setting up blogs, handles media and multiple authors. Without plugins or adjusting settings I can start a podcast by mailing posterous an episode. The API is simple enough for a non coder to use.
Case in point is edutalk.cc posterous allows us to take emailed audio from anyone and moderate it. It lets us poll and auto post to the moderation queue audioboo and ipadio episodes tagged edutalk.
It is also possible to backup posterous to wordpress, as you go, by using the auto post facility.
1. “open source is the corner stone of 99% of the successful publishing platforms used long term on the internet.” I was surprised at this, I know wp has a tight hold on bloggers but 99%!
2. No you can’t, but there is an API, I am sure it will not be beyond the WP community to write a posterous importer, surprised it has not happened… quick google… http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/posterous-importer/ seems to be a plugin for self hosted too.
3. Yes
4. At the moment, posterous is changing getting more complex but seems to have held on to its core functionality, I hope it keeps doing so.
5. A lot of folk have asked for this from posterous, but what I originally liked about posterous was its simplicity I though the lack of themes was a positive;-)
I also use posterous as a posting mechanism for flickr, twitter and my main blog, this is a nice feature. The bokmarklet blogging is nicer than the wordpress version Posterous is great for throwaway blogs for multiple authors, a lot of teachmeets seem to be using posterous for folk to post images, audio, video, presentations ect. It only take a few minutes to set one of these up, share the email address and wait for folk to post stuff.
If folk understand the features of posterous they might find it the right tool for a particular job. Personally, I don’t like all my eggs in one basket, I like some closed solutions some open, some self hosted some services, some free some paid for. Some stuff I’ve posted I’d be upset about losing and some is throwaway.