Blogging with iWork

I've posted a few videos and blog articles praising iWork for it's functionality, ease of use and clean interface. Now, I get to add a new word to the list: flexibility. You can use iWork's suite of tools for any number of things. Pages for simple documents or creative advertising. Numbers for accounting or a middle school pie chart. Keynote for a presentation or an animation. But what would you say if I added the idea of an online blog to the mix?
When you combine iWork and iWork.com, that's exactly what you can get. With Pages, you can create professional, magazine style, blogs that you can customize any way you want or simply use one of the pre-installed templates. When you want to publish, upload it as an iWork.com document and send updates to your user list. You can even use a dot.tk domain or your own to redirect it to your iWork shared documents folders. Users can then logon and view your post.

Downsides

The biggest downside is the lack of exposure you get with iWork.com. Setting up a domain is a little more difficult and users don't want to have to create an Apple account if they don't already have one. You also don't get as many complex tools that a regular blog site would offer such as statistics and rich HTML editing.

The Perks

I'll admit, I'm not switching over to this system any time soon but there are still some perks about it. You can easily update users on your mail list with every upload to iWork.com and allow them to comment with ease on every one of your posts. iWork.com also has a very impressive, easy and professional looking interface. When viewing documents, users have a helpful sidebar in the left that allows them to change pages along with a right sidebar with options and the comment box. When they return to your shared documents page, users will see a very clean layout of all the documents you've published and they can selected them accordingly to view them. As far as editing, there are hardly any drawbacks. iWork offers a great page creation experience in pages. Instead of clunky HTML, you get a very easy to use, ready made, drag and drop interface. You can use the provided templates or create your own. Then, just drop in some pictures, fill in the texts and hit the publish button.
Though it's a rather new concept for bloggers, it might prove to be a great new, and free alternative to creating a professional online magazine or blog. I might actually end up making an alternative version of the site on iWork.com just to see how it would work out. If it works decently, I might switch over and not pay a dime for web hosting or domains.

Comments

[Acai Berry]

Wonderful post... Very informational and educational as usual!

Acai Optimum