Monday, June 4th, 2007...6:38 am

Offline Blog Editing Tools

While the built-in editor for Wordpress does the trick most of the time, it’s features are rather simple and don’t allow for more advanced post layouts without getting your hands dirty with some HTML coding.

If you are looking for a more flexible and sophisticated way to compose your posts there are a few blog editing tools you may want to have a look at. They give you much more control over how you assemble your posts, and allow you to do so without being shackled to the Internet.

These are the ones I’ve come across at one point or another. If there are any others I’ve missed let me know.

Microsoft Windows Live Writer (Windows) - Price: Free

Qumana Blog Editor (Windows/Mac OS X) - Price: Free

Post2Blog (Windows) - Price: Free

BlogDesk (Windows) -Price: Free

ScribeFire (Firefox Extension) - Price: Free

w.bloggar (Windows) - Price: Free

BlogJet (Windows) - Price: US $39.99

Ecto (Windows/Mac OS X) - Price: $17.95

WB Editor (Windows) -Price: US $19.99

MarsEdit (Mac OS X) - Price: $24.95

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32 Comments

  • I take it that these let you write your posts while offline and just connects to the internet when you want to publish? I’ve always just wrote my posts using the wordpress editor. Are tools like these good alternatives, or is the wordpress editor better?

  • Another option:
    I do my blog writing in OneNote. When a post is ready to go, I right click and select “Blog This”. Opens Word 2007 and one click later the blog post is published. I dont’ save the Word docs, only the page in OneNote. Blog posts in progress are stored in one section of a notebook. Published posts are stored in another. When a post is published, I just drag it from unpublished to published.

    While this isn’t a free option, it is an option that many users already have on their desktops.

  • I usually write with ScribeFire as I can look at some relevant content while writing my own point of view at the same time.

    I’ve read about too many bugs with Windows Live Writer so I’m hesitant to even install it. Will give a look at the other ones too.

  • […] UPDATE: I’ve just come across a post from The Wrong Advices which lists a number of offline blogging tools in addition to Bloggar called, unsurprisingly, Offline Blog Editing Tools […]

  • Brown Baron: That’s exactly how they work. If you have a laptop and travel a bit an offline editor will come in handy. The built-in Wordpress editor is functional but I find it slow compared to standalone editors. When I’m writing something with images I tend to be constantly saving and checking the preview. This tends to be slow and inefficient. Live Writer has a nice function where it will emulate your blogs style so you can see what the post will look like as you are writing. It really is a great feature. WB Editor does this as well.

    Ali: I used ScribeFire for a bit. Being able to read a site and write at the same time was something that attracted me to it but in the end I went back to Live Writer. While it has a few quirks I wouldn’t call it particularly buggy. I’ve never had it crash on me yet. :)

  • Great suggestions, Dan. The few times I haven’t used the WordPress editor, I’ve resorted to the inferior capabilities of Notepad. :)

  • Kathy, for some reason Akismet flagged your post. It’s been doing odd things lately.

    I wasn’t familiar with OneNote so I did a little digging and it looks like something that would really come in handy. I’m terrible at organising notes and snippets of information that I gather. I could really do with something that centralizes all this information and makes it easy to retrieve.

    Derrich, notepad has its uses. :) I still find myself using it when I need to quickly jot down some notes.

  • Sounds good to me. I think I’ll take a look at Live Writer.

  • Windows Live Writer and ScribeFire sounds good to me!!!

  • ScribeFire mysteriously showed up on my browser, but I do not remember downloading it.

    Now I need to give it a test drive after reading this post.

  • PS - Do any of these have storage capabilities, or can you use any of these programs with online storage like Steekr or Omindrive?

    Thanks

  • I use ScribeFire as it is a Firefox extensions and I don’t have to install any other blog editing software in my computer. Whenever it’s possible, I always try to avoid to install any sofwares in my computer in order to keep my computer in peak performance.

  • Good point from Alwitt. Also, why pay for something, if you do not have to.

  • Just download and install Windows Live Writer. I give it thumb up for overall usability. However, two things I don’t really like.

    For every link break, it just add tag and it’s memory sucker. I have few windows open for different blog entries. It’s slowing down my pc. It runs faster when I turn of real-time spell check.

    So far, the Web Preview features are what I like it most.

  • Hi, this offline thing sounds good. Let me share with you that i am a new user of blogger and hence like to see some examples, is there any? And what is your feedback on these, do they really help?
    Thanks

  • sorry, more to add to my previous comment, which one shall i choose for my blogger account?

  • […] are many offline blog writer tools out there. You can find the some of them from “The wrong advices.” , (PS. I think it should name awesome advices), which is one of my must read blog everyday. I […]

  • Sorry. I apology my trackback problem above. I was using BlogDesk to modify my published post, it creates a new one because I tried to correct typo in my post title. It makes the link broken. Now I switch back to old title it is ok.

    I have decided to use BlogDesk for my offline writer. It’s very nice tools as I reviewed.

    Thank you for the information you provided.

  • Nice article. I would suggest the Zoundry Blog Editor (www.zoundry.com). I´ve been using it for a some time now, it has nice useful features and fulfill my needs for blogging. Ah, and it´s free, by the way…

  • Thanks for the FYI on those editors I was un-aware of this.

  • Which of these blog editor apps has this feature that shows saved/unpublished blog posts?

  • Hi

    I am Lucy, I have found your website while searching for some info at Google. Your site has helped me in a big way.

    G’night

  • […] The Wrong Advices: Offline Blog Editing Tools […]

  • Hey, thats really cool. Wordpress editing always frustrated me anyway…here we go qumana. Thanks Dan!

  • LiveWriter is bloated, mouse centric, and adds code to your posts that you may not want there. It’s a typical MS app.

    Blogjet is very good, but expensive.

    Ecto is not so great, it’s features vary as to platform and requires dotnet.

    WBlogger is very good but not WYSIWYG.

    BlogDesk does things that are weird system-wise. It’s much too busy. It also has some weird bugs.

    Post2Blog is horrible. Poorly coded, bloated, and not flexible at all. It’s not user friendly.

    Qumana is a nightmare.

    I don’t use anything FF. Unsafe.

  • I’ve been disappointed with LiveWriter. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks, and it’s caused some weird problems with my system (I’m running Vista). The most annoying–which I consider an unacceptable “bug”, is that when the app is open, I have an intermittent problem saving files in other apps like word and photoshop.

    I would just use word, but copy/paste inserts some weird yellow highlight behind my font!

  • […] make blogging much more easier and also allow to manage multiple blogs at the same time.Here is the offline blogging tools. A Feed Reader A Feed reader is the bloggers best friend. A Feed reader allows you to keep track of […]

  • I find live writer kinda heavy and sluggish. Blogdesk is good one. Soon will give a try to scribefire.

  • […] Live Writer is an offline blog editor - it really is just "best of show" and about 100x better than the native post editor […]

  • I’ve been using livewriter.. I love it. I have over 200 different blogs. It helps so much and it’s super easy for me. plus it’s free.. so I’m able to put that software money to ads which is great! This is list is great. I’m considering trying some of them. Thanks

  • […] if I dont, I dont write NOW, I may never. So hunting for some good place to start off with, I found this interesting article. He talks about various offline blog editors that I can use. I have heard from […]

  • […] on Blog offline editing tools A few Blog offline editing tools are being tested at the moment, including Windows Live writer, blogjet, and a few others. A list of such tools could be found here. […]

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