Thursday, June 22, 2006

A platform optimized for chess bloggers

Most chess blogs (including this one) are built on general purpose blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress or TypePad. When we want to display games or positions we need to turn to chess tools like ChessViewer, ChessPad, ChessBase or the recently launched web-based ChessUp and figure out how to integrate the appropriate html code into our posts. Sometimes this is relatively easy, other times not (of course, the technical savvy of the blogger plays an important role).

Martin Villwock of Germany offers his solution to this problem -- chesslog.de, a blogging platform specifically designed to share chess games. Now, it's as simple as pasting in "... PGN files and see[ing] the games visualized instantly". In the bottom left hand corner of the his home page are links to several chesslog.de blogs that you can check out.


While I find the chesslog.de platform intriguing, I'm struggling with whether the sites it creates should properly be classified as blogs. The archives do provide a chronological list of entries, but the homepage of each site seems more reminiscent of pre-blogging personal game pages people used to create (still do?). The platform does allow comments but does not currently allow you to create sidebar links. I'd be interested in others' views on whether these sites ought to be thought of as blogs.

Blogs or not, chesslog.de is an interesting platform which some of you may find useful.

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