To beBee or Not to beBee, That is the Question.

When Javier, Juan and John first started talking about beBee's publishing platform, I got excited. I figured these guys could put together the type of platform that would please readers and writers alike.

I’ve been looking forward to today for a long time.

So, it stands to reason that, today, the day it's announced, I'm drawing a blank!

I didn't have a clue what I should write about. What a time for me to get my first case of writers' block. Yes, this would be my first. I'm usually a blabbermouth.

Then it hit me.

The purpose of my first post here is to put the publishing platform through its paces. How does it compare to others?

Is it good? Better? Best?

That's the subject of this post!

This will be my first look and I'll give my honest opinions. They will be unvarnished. You will get them warts and all.

I'm writing this on the fly. I won't even edit it. (Don't try this at home)

Some things I may not notice right away. Some things are probably still in development.

I am at the very beginning of the learning curve, here.

Then again, so is everyone else.

To my mind, there are certain things that a publishing platform needs to do and do well.

• It needs to be easy to use
• It needs to offer enough formatting options to be useful, but not so many as to make posts look crappy.
• It needs to use images effectively.
• Ideally, one should be able to write directly in the platform. This is a requirement even though most writers prefer to paste their work in
• It needs to be intuitive

Images

It’s still early, but there is no documentation about the size of images to use.  I looked around and found that Javier’s post used a 930X620 sized image. It looked good. That is what I use here. 

It’s a fairly conventional 3:2 ratio so that’s good news. The bad news is that it adds another image size to create.

That’s a minor issue.  I find the 3:2 ratio provides good balance and is a good choice.

No complaints from me.

I also found another post that used a 2909X958 image. This leads me to assume that beBee has implemented an open image specification. The optimum size may be different.

Whatever, I’ll stick with 930X620 for now.

There’s another issue that is potentially more serious. 

beBee decided to place headline text above the headline image. It’s an unusual treatment. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s just a surprising thing. 

Headline images usually come before headline text. Why? I don’t know. But, there may well be a good reason for it. 

Or maybe that’s just the way it was always done. Time will tell if that becomes an issue.

Inline images

I just wanted to see how beBee treats it. It was easy enough to do.

BeBee probably has the best inline image handling.

Great thing: Click on an image and tools show up. You can resize to pre-set percentages and decide how or if text flows around it.

Not so good thing: The image needs some padding between itself and the text. See how text sticks right up against the image? That's easily fixed.

Bad thing: As soon as the image was inserted, my browser slowed to a crawl. I deleted the image and continued on. 

I don't think this is a problem really. It's more a sign of growing pains. This is not the type of thing that will show up in pre-launch tests. The issue may only be on specific browsers having specific extensions installed. 

Score on image use: 9/10 (I removed a point for the doubt in my mind about the text-first thing. Padding and browser slows are fixable things)

Formatting

Formatting has a very limited pallet. That’s a good thing. Sometimes people use all available formats in one post.

That’s not a good idea. Limiting the pallet makes good sense. But, did they go too far?

You can choose paragraph headlines in two formats, H2 or H3. 

I find H2 to be too big, but that’s just me. I wish there was another one, say H4. While I'm wishing, it would also be nice to be able to choose colours for headers.

I also find that there is too much space after a headline. It's personal preference, but I prefer to see more space above the header and less between it and the paragraph it describes.

Okay, I'm being picky.

You also have access to unordered lists a.k.a. bulleted lists. The ordered (numbered) list is missing and would be nice to have. It’s not absolutely necessary.

The comment/quote format is well done. It’s not as obtrusive as LinkedIn’s. I just might start using quotes.

Paul Croubalian likes our quotes: Paul from right here

It would have been nice to have a “View as HTML” button like in WordPress, but that would be a lot to ask.

Links

This is effing brilliant!!! beBee has the ability to accept long links. That may not seem Earth-shattering. 

Trust me, it is.

Any power user who builds social links, source tracking links, or any other such things is annoyed when he/she needs to run over to Bitly to shorten them. I know I am.

Here, we don’t have to. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Formatting score: 9/10 (lost points for overly simple formatting, gained for big link capability)

Social Share Buttons

Well, there aren’t any. That’s not a big deal to me since I like to build my own Twitter links. Other publishers may be more affected. I assume they are in development. Let's reserve judgement for now. CORRECTION: The social share buttons are visible in the reading view. 

Authors: You can edit an existing post from your Author's Page. There's an icon that looks like a pen and paper on the top right of each post

Pasting Text

I had some issues pasting text from Word etc. The text pasted as H2 but insisted it was paragraph text. Then, about half-way down it fixed itself. 

More growing pains. That's certainly not enough for me to refuse to use this platform.

Intuition

Tagging hives on posts is not all that intuitive. Maybe that's because my browser is running so slow from the images. I originally thought I couldn't tag. Then, poof, they showed up. You need to start typing a name. Then the list populates. Now you know.

What I would like to see going forward

Nobody asked me, but what the heck.

I'd like to see some features that help authors get their jobs done. Some, like social share buttons, are no doubt in development. Others, probably not.

Top among my List of Wishes is a sign-off file. Basically, it would be like the signature that gets added to emails, but for posts. I guess the technical name for it would be a generic footer. It would be great to put a blurb in somewhere and have it appear automatically on every post.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Overall Impressions

Overall, I am very impressed. Great Job, Javier, Juan, and the gang. This publishing platform is starting off much better than I expected. It can only get better from here. I'm sure many of my comments and suggestions are already on your radar.

I fully expect to transition my writing to beBee in the near future. I suggest you consider doing the same.

Right now, I think I'll change my sign-off image to add beBee VIP.

FURTHER NOTE: Browser slow-down does not occur in post editing.

Cheers

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