One of the things I like to periodically do is to talk about bits of Mac software that I use, or that we have adopted around the office. Today, it's about my chosen tool for managing this blog and a couple of other websites.
Now, I'm quite technical, and though there are several good server based content management systems, I really prefer to work client side for something like a blog or a small static website. I'll also admit to being unwilling to waste a lot of time fiddling with stylesheets and page layout for something like this blog, so over the years I have tinkered with many of the lightweight web tools, for a while I used Lifli's iBlog, and then I tried Apple's iWeb, but for the last year, I've been using Karelia's Sandvox.
The concept that Sandvox is built on really isn't new, there are many attempts, but the execution in Sandvox is what makes it work so well. In the early versions, I found it a little buggy, and that I could crash the application fairly easily. But during the last year, those issues have really gone away, so about 6 months ago, I published the first site that I'm using Sandvox for. That site is also the most comprehensive and uses more features of Sandvox than any of the others, but it works. After that had been up for a couple of months, I decided to move my other blogs sections to more topically appropriate locations. In doing so, I elected to take both this, and my scooter blog to Sandvox as well.
While there are some features that I'd like to see as a more 'professional' developer, I really don't think they should be implemented. The reason, is that I bought a family license and also set the wife kids up with their own copies of Sandvox. Witnessing the sites they have assembled, I realize that the elegance of Sandvox is in it's template driven simplicity.
In short, it is the only tool of it's kind that can be pushed up to a high end static sit, or something simple and manageable by a non-technical homemaker or an 8 year old boy who just wants to show of his pictures of his puppy.
So is it a perfect application? not yet, but it's worth a 5 of 5 rating in it's current form.