2010-07-02

Tools used for creating a chess blog

When I started my blog a few weeks ago I had a hard time finding good places to create board images and finding a way to share PGN games. Hopefully this post will help others who decide to create a chess blog.  There are a good number of tools available and I have found these to be great.

  • For creating Chess Diagrams, I have been using chessup.net.  The website allows you to setup a board, change the colors as needed and then create an image that you can upload to your blog.  It works great.  
  • Another way to create diagrams is to use a program called DiagTransfer.  It is a native Windows program, but it works fine in Crossover Office.  It allows you to add arrows and markers to a board.  I still have not used it but when I get into describing a position more in depth I probably will use the arrows and markers.
  • As for posting games, I have found pgn4web to be the best option.   It will accept a PGN game as input and will create a board on the page to show that specific game.
  • I use Blogger to host my blog.  It works fairly well and is a common blogging platform that is well supported.
  • Scribefire is a nice Firefox addon that allows one to write posts to multiple blogs.  It is highly recommended and cross platform.
If you write a chess blog which tools do you use for sharing games, puzzles etc?  Are there any really nice ones that I missed?

2 comments:

  1. I have used and liked Chessflash for posting games.

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  2. I tried that but I did not like the idea of being dependent on Flash. Sometimes I run my browsers without Flash for security or other reasons, like getting frustrated with a Flash based site.

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