Writing new entries online using your weblog’s control panel can be complicated and time-consuming, especially if you want to format your text or insert many images. Even though most modern blogging and cms systems have great WYSIWYG editors they are simply not as responsive and efficient to work with as a good old desktop style application. This post provides a list of desktop client blogging tools that have potential to make your blogging easier, more fun and faster. If you’re serious about blogging and haven’t checked out any desktop clients yet this is the time to do it!
Advertisement
Windows Live Writer
Live Writer is awesome, free and really can speed up your blogging. The interface is simple and user friendly and the program even supports downloading themes from your blog for providing instant realistic preview on the desktop. (I had problems making this work though…). Still I have to say that this tool is well integrated with WordPress that I tested with. It is easy to format the text with headings, insert images etc. You can copy paste text with links etc. from web pages. This is important and not all blogging clients allow this. You can also manage multiple blogs, and it is clear if you simply upload or upload and publish…while testing other clients I found out the hard way that this is not always clear. Spelling support also seams to work very well. Thispost was created entirely in Live Writer (My first desktop edited post. I really enjoyed working this way!).
- Platform: Windows Price: Free
- Supports: Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress Type
- Website | Download
BlogDesk
BlogDesk is free and really simple and easy to use but it does far from offer the same number of features found in Live writer. BlogDesk does not support pasting text where html markup is preserved. This is a feature I could not live without. It also seams to be lacking a feature to allow authors set style on text like headings.
- Platform: Windows
- Price: Free
- Supports:WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine
- Website | Download
Ecto
Ecto is a commercial tool with a good editing interface, except for the html view that I experienced didn’t format the html very well. Blog management is a bit slow in my opinion. It seams like it downloads all posts fully every time you refresh. This makes it impossible to have a list of all posts downloaded for finding a existing post fast.
- Platform: Windows, Mac
- Price: Free Trial / $17.95
- Supports: Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress, and more
- Website | Download
BlogJet
A popular Windows blog client for your WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Drupal, etc. blogs. This tool is commercial but price is acceptable for most people if they like it. Post and page management seams good and you can easily filter on names to locate a post. Unfortunately it only allows you to download 100 posts making it hard to manage old posts. The tools supports pasting in text keeping markup. On the other hand I have not been able to find a way to set style on text like headings. Going into the code view to add h2 tags is not efficient.
- Platform: Windows only
- Price: Free trial / €29.95
- Supports: WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, Blogware, BlogHarbor, Squarespace, Drupal, Community Server, etc.
- Website | Download
RocketPost2
RocketPost2 is commercial if you want to use it with most blogging platforms. This tool is really feature rich easy to work with. The blog administration window is good and gives good control of downloading posts, and actually support updating multiple posts in batch (did try this though..). The editor has many features but I miss good support for pasting from web pages. You can do basic styling like adding headers. The tool also allow you to do a lot of additional styling but normally you will not change color or text size directly but use CSS…
- Platform: Windows
- Price: Free Trial / $29-49 (free for use with Blogger and Live Space.
- Supports: Tightly integrated with Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, MSN Spaces, BlogHarbor, Drupal, dasBlog, BlogEngine.NET, .Text and SquareSpace
- Website | Download
Deepest Sender
Deepest Sender is running in your browser and it is as simple as it gets. There’s not a lot of features and blog management in the box but you can use this for creating fast posts as you surf around. It is actually quite simple to drag stuff from a web page into a post.
- Platform: Firefox, SeaMoney, XULRunner
- Price: Free
- Supports: LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, MSN Live Spaces, meta Weblog
- Website | Download
Flock Blog Editor
Flock Blog Editor is like Deepest Sender a program that is bound to a browser. Flock Blog Editor is part the Flock Browser. I never used Flock Browser before but having played with it for a few minutes makes me think it is worth investigating further.
- Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
- Price: Free
- Supports: Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, WordPress, Xanga, Moveable Type
- Website | Download
ThingamaBlog
Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.
Do not miss these great Kindle 3 covers if you have a new generation of Kindle. Inspire your self with these awesome Kindle covers and cases. Enjoy reading.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
My personal favorite, after trying most of these, was Windows Live Writer. Manages multiple blogs seemlessly, has plugin integration for new cool features and allows me to keep three drafts open as I research and gather info.
And the theme specific preview (which I got working on all but 1 of the 11 blogs I used WLW with) helps me keep straight about which blog I am writing to at the time.
@Cenay, thank you so much for sharing your experience and preference in this area. 11 blogs…wow you must be busy!
thnx a lot for such a nice list of OL blogging clients,like Cenay said WLW is the best and makes blogging a lot easier.
I will definitely have to try some of them. I’m looking for a client that runs on both windows and mac
Try Xpostulate (http://baldwinsoftware.com/xpost.html). a cross-posting blog and microblog client that updates wordpress, livejournal, dreamwidth, inksome, insanejournal, deadjournal, scribbld, iziblog, twitter and identi.ca, all in one. Fully cross-platform (win/lin/mac/bsd), and free (gpl, as in freedom and $0).
All these are good tools and I was using Windows Live Writer when I was on Windows and then shifted to Ecto when I got my Mac Book Pro. When you are traveling and don’t have access to your tools or when you are to use someone else PC you get into trouble. I have about 8 blogs which I have to manage and moderate the comments too. I think none of them can be used to moderate comments. Looking into these factors, I wrote a plugin which I have installed on one of my blog and I manage all my blogs using this plugin. I can moderate comments, do new posts, reply to comments, even reply via email (personal message to commentators, etc). You can find more information on this plugin here http://kishpress.com/kish-multi-pro/ . Its totally standalone and you can use it anywhere.
This has been an eye-opener for me. I’m still editing the old way.
@John, you have to give one of the clients a try. it is so much faster to create content that way. Windows Writer is my favourite!
WLW is the best for me ,I just wonder if their is anything better then that?
I like this and I will definitely have to try some of them.
Hi, the RocketPost2 is commercial if you want to use it with most blogging platforms. This tool is really feature rich easy to work with. The blog administration window is good and gives good control of downloading posts, and actually support updating multiple posts in batch.
Thanks for this awesome collection. I even did not knew that desktop clients for blogging existed. Downloading the windows live writer right now.
Right choice Vijay, Writer have saved to tons of hours!!!
thanks alot for nice information frnds, i used blogjet, w.blogger and 2 more. now i am going to try WLW. i will share my experience later.
keep working,
Windows Live Writer is the best. ^_^
I agree Muhammed, but if you have a huge post I have found that there are two limitations.
1) Can load list of pages if there are more than around 20 pages
2) Impossible to open old posts if you have more than the max it can download…
I haven’t added a blog to my site yet but plan to, thank you for the information.
your welcome, I think it is worth it as a blog is an excellent marketing resource
Great list, this help me to determine what Offline Blogging tools that must i use to update my Blog. Thank s
I really need this, thanks for it.
I have Windows Live pre-installed on my laptop and never once thought of using it until I read this. It’s now definitely my favorite!! Thank you so much!
Thanks for nice information,, i will try Windows Live Writer af first,,
{ 8 trackbacks }