After playing around with Posterous this evening, overall I've found it to be an impressive blog platform/web service. It was easy to setup, easy to setup with a custom domain, easy to post to (via email, etc.). It's a quick and easy way to blog. Its very easy to maintain and manage.
However I've discovered a few issues that I'm not sure will allow me to make Posterous my "blog platform of choice" for my personal blogging needs.
It's not quite compatible with Internet Explorer 8. Sorry but this is a important element to me. I attempted to customize the theme and add the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/> tag but that ended up breaking several elements of Posterous's default theme.
I found the custom theme stuff to be a little bit wonky. I wanted to add some elements to the sidebar, such as a blogroll, and found it wasn't very easy to do. I want to be able to create at least a blogroll. Surprised customization of the sidebar for Posterous isn't there. They want to be seen as a true blogging platform and they say they are not "micro-blogging" platform. I would consider customization to be key here. And a blogroll. I also don't see any sort of special archiving feature for old blog posts. I personally like having an archive element for easier navigation to older blog posts in the sidebar of my blog.
Another missing element: support for Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is the best app on the market today for publishing blog posts. I use it and rely on it heavily. Not being able to use it here for a Posterous blog is disappointing. Now, on the flip side - I'm writing this blog post in Windows Live Mail. Posterous does an excellent job supporting publishing via email. I know Posterous is quite proud of being a service for blogging and posting anything to the internet *via email* but I think they should look at taking advantage of Windows Live Writer too to post content. If I were a blogging platform - ...err a platform for posting anything to the web - I would want to find as many ways as possible to have people posting content.
These are just a few initial thoughts. Will continue to play with the platform for a bit longer. I also sent some feedback/support questions to their help email. I look forward to hearing back from them.
By the way, is there a way to tag a post when posting via email?
