Welcome to Webby Wednesday, today is the 23rd day of this month long Blogging Challenge. In this post, I will talk about consolidating different web hosting services. Recently, I listed down the web hosting plans and services we have; including shared hosting, VPS and SaaS hosting providers. It is time to start culling the non-active services, and consolidate the plans with a few selected providers. This applies to hosting, email and cloud storage. Learn how I ended up with multiple services, what is their expanse, and how I plan to consolidate them.
Welcome to Day 20 of my blogging challenge. Today’s post is a hybrid. The first part of this post is what is known as a listicle. I began writing this post as a compilation of writing apps on the Mac that are used for blogging. I decided to use Zoho Writer for this post. As I began using this tool, I discovered many of its features.This second half of this post highlights some of the features that you will love about this app.
Review of Zoho Writer
I have written this post using Zoho Writer. For gaathastory, we have subscription for Zoho, and I had not really used the apps that Zoho offers to their fullest extent. We have used Zoho Cliq, Zoho Meetings, Mail and Docs (now Workdrive), and to an extent, Zoho Sheets. But the writing app sounded particularly appealing to me. I decided to give it a try.
I had composed the above version of this post using Zoho Writer- Mac App
I wrote the below post using Zoho Writer- web version
Writing apps for Mac.
What I like about the Writer App for Zoho
1. The Mac app is slick
I found the app to be fast, not much of a memory hog, and quite responsive to both mouse and keyboard commands. The app opened in the minimal version, without the toolbars and other bells and whistles. This offered a distraction free, clean writing experience.
Dashboard of Zoho Mac App
2. The sync feature with Zoho Drive is awesome
The desktop app syncs the documents with Zoho Drive. The syncing with Zoho Drive is quite good. When the computer is connected to the Internet, the sync with Zoho Drive is nearly on real time basis.
I had a first hand experience of this feature- while drafting this blog post on the Mac App, the battery of the MacBook Pro died. The machine shutdown abruptly in the middle of writing. I lost only the last sentence I was typing! The Windows app might behave similarly, but since I do not use windows- therefore cannot confirm the features or functionality.
While drafting this blog post on the Mac App, the battery of the MacBook Pro died. The machine shut down abruptly in the middle of writing. I lost only the last sentence I was typing, rest of the document was retained and accessible from the web version.
3. Grammar and Spelling Checker
Grammar and Spelling tools are quite easy to maneuver and recommendations are easy to follow. The recommendations for SEO are quite similar to Ink App or similar tools. I simply had to click on the menu, at the top right, and the recommendations popped up. The menu on the left (vertical toolbar) is optional and a user can easily hide them to get them out of the way.
Spell checker too in Zoho Writer The Spellcheck tool can also suggest Alternative words for better readability
4. Menu in Hindi
I like that the interface can be (partially at least) changed to Hindi.
5. Dark Mode
I believe that in 2022, an application without a dark mode should simply not exist. Thankfully, that is not the case with Zoho Writer. I composed the majority of this post in Dark mode!
6. Editing and Collaboration Tools
The below screenshot shows the options in the “File” menu. It is in Hindi of course, but the major items are all there- creating a version, duplication, collaboration (inviting others or sharing the file with others), besides commenting and exporting to HTML or PDF, and so on.
Wrapping it up: Zoho Writer is a solid App
When I began writing this post, I had planned to write a couple of lines about each of the different apps or tools I had used for writing. The goal was to talk about interface, installation, which features I liked or disliked. The post took its own form, and as they say, I decided to keep things the way they are. As they say, let sleeping dogs lie. (My dog Buddy is sleeping below my desk as I write, maybe that’s why this phrase came to my mind).
Zoho writer is a solid writing tool. I may give it a try for a longer period than intended.
Welcome to number 17 of this blogging challenge.Today is a Thursday. The theme for Thursdays is Techie Thursday. I had written a post last year on using different ways to prevent these spam messages, and using relay services is one of them. This service has been covered earlier, in this post find an expanded list with some updates that may be relevant to you.
Feature image: Email Relay for preventing SPAM. Blog of Amar Vyas Read More »How to use email relay to protect your email for privacy
Welcome to today’s post, day number 16. On Wednesdays, our theme is Webby Wednesdays, under which I write about web hosting, content delivery networks, websites security and related topics. For today’s post, there’s an update about this blog.This blog began as a WordPress site, then we moved to ClassicPress. As of yesterday, we are back to square one. This may seem like a back and forth, possibly indicating that I am unable to make up my mind.This reversal is intentional, with a long term goal to move away from WordPress altogether. Read More »Website Updates- Back to WordPress and way forward
Welcome to sassy Sundays today is the 13th day of my blogging challenge and yesterday after a deliberate pause on the daily publishing Mind you… Read More »Sassy Sunday- 13 Feb 2022 Post
Welcome to Day ten of this #bloggingchallenge. Today’s theme is Technology Thursday, and for today’s post, I have used a mix of my creativity, a real life conversation, and technology tools to answer the question,
“Where do I find Free themes for WordPress?”
You may or may not be familiar with the terms WordPress or Themes. What may be of interest to you is the approach I used for publishing this post. I have covered this in the ‘hybrid approach of writing’ section at the end of this post. For now, let us get back to the post itself.
In today’s post, learn about the new structure and new layout for this website, and what it means for you. I have been making a series of changes to this site and blog. Some are visibly evident- the changing themes for example. Others are structural. And a large number of changes are related to speed, optimization and security. In this post, I will explain what some of the changes mean for you, the readers of this blog, and what you can expect. Welcome to Day 9 of my month long blogging challenge for the month of February. On Wednesdays. I write about matters related to websites, which include web hosting, email, website management, and so on. This week I would like to write about an overhaul to this website. This is a work in progress.
Summary: Having multiple devices with different operating systems and Apps waste time, consume un-necessary bandwidth, and are overall bad for productivity (and the environment).
A few years ago, I had written a post on this blog with a very similar title. My premise back then was that with more and more devices coming into every household, the number of operating systems one has to deal with is only going to keep increasing. Read More »The Four Operating System Household – 2022 Edition
Typesetter CMS is lightweight,fast Content Management System (CMS). It is based on PHP, and is open source CMS. Most importantly, it is a flat file CMS and therefore does not require any database, which also makes it easily portable. Unfortunately, like many community or open source projects, its development had stalled over the past few years.That may no longer be the case. Recently, there have been some positive developments. Version 5.8 preview is out in the wild, (the maintainer calls it late alpha/ early beta) and I spent some time tinkering around with it.
