Structured Blogging is an attempt to organize content. It is, in many ways, an effort to create a standard for creating blog content. By organizing this content, it is hoped that it will serve the broader web community in numerous ways.

Currently, SB is only available for WordPress and MovableType blog platforms. This post was written using SB. I will be writing several more in order to get a better feel for it.

So far here is my list of pros and cons:

Pros

Leveraging xml in order to provide organized information for the wider web community.This will become more apparent as SB is used to develop web applications and the like. It will be interesting to see if this end of things takes off.

Especially useful for reviews where lots of details like date, artist, etc. are needed. Write a lot of review kind of posts? Then SB is ideal.

Built in tag generator- opps! see cons below

Organizes writing, helps to maintain thoughts, remember details, etc.

Cons

When entering a structured blog post, the Structured blogging editor is used over the WordPress Editor. This means two things: no adding a category on the fly and no easy to use tag buttons. Want to add a link within this review box? Code it manually. That sucks. Doesn’t save time.

Post preview works like pre 2.0 WordPress. Have to save it, then go back to manage and reclick the post. Then a preview is available at the bottom

Which review format should I use?
I debated whether to use the Software review format or the Website review format. Neither was exactly what I wanted. I ended up picking the software review format. I write a lot about web tools. I need a hybrid of the aforementioned formats. If I understand the website, I may be able to create my own format. However, this raises a question. If users can create/modify their own formats, doesn’t that work against creating a standard?

Tag generator does what exactly?
Initially I thought this was for Technorati tags. But it is not. What’s the purpose of this again?

While the installation is not difficult, it may be daunting for beginners because it requires more than a file in the plugin folder and an activation. There are numerous other files that need to be uploaded.

Produces invalid HTML

Even though they say it is fixed, it still produced one RSS Feed validation error.

I am curious whether others have given SB a spin. Thoughts?

[tags]wordpress, blogging, structured+blogging[/tags]