I’m now writing on a few blogs. BloodHoundBlog, of course. But also my own firm blogs for criminal law and bankruptcy law.
All this blogging can get a guy down, especially when you have to use WordPress’s web interface. I like the act of writing. I hate the act of logging into WordPress and blogging.
So I’ve been looking for webblogging clients – tools you can use to interface with the blog, draft posts from your desktop, and post them without having to log into the actual WordPress site.
I’ve been using ScribeFire for a few months, and it’s ok. It is a plugin that works with Firefox, whether on a Mac or a PC. The problem is that, so far as I know, the plugin hasn’t been re-written for Google Chrome. And I like Google Chrome because it is so fast.
I recently did a little googling, and found some other clients. The best of the batch, which I’ve been using today, is called Ecto. Ecto is only available on a Mac. It’s light-weight, easy to use, has the ability to “cross-post” to different blogs, and also interacts well with WordPress’s various features, like scheduled posts, tags, and categories.
It’s a little buggy. It’s crashed once on me today. I’m hoping that is fixed, because otherwise I like it.
This post was written with Ecto, in fact.
Jim Duncan says:
I’ve been a raving fan of ecto for years. I was forced to use marsedit for six months this year, and while it’s a very good client, ecto allows for much easier writing which is what I want to do.
Additionally, its handling of pictures – resizing, tagging, renaming – is simple and works.
November 26, 2009 — 7:50 am
Greg Swann says:
We’ve used ecto since mid-2006, but I draft in TextWrangler, a free programmer’s/text editor for the Macintosh. When I’m done writing, I’ll copy and paste the draft into ecto, then preview and proofread there.
November 26, 2009 — 8:52 am
Sue says:
I’ve never really considered any thing like this – I just log into wordpress – so thanks for the update, looks like blogging could be far easier than it is at the moment.
November 26, 2009 — 4:44 pm
Chris Johnson says:
MacJournal is also a choice, but if you’re using Thesis, it may overwrite some styling.
ECTO isn’t bad. I actually liked Windows Live Writer pretty well as well, one of the only things I still miss (the other is the ability to dismiss popup windows by pushing an arrow and hitting enter).
November 27, 2009 — 8:02 am
James Boyer says:
Hmmm, I had never even thought about using any of the products. Just kept logging into my wordpress back end and writing. What is the big advantage for a PC/firefox user? Time savings, ease of use? …
November 28, 2009 — 4:02 pm
Jeff Brown says:
I don’t see the big deal about writing on WordPress either, but then I”m the poster child for TechTard.
And while we’re on the subject of Chrome — I Google ‘Chrome for Mac download’ and get a ton of results, but still no chrome for my Mac. WTH?
November 28, 2009 — 7:22 pm
mike says:
The very first result in Google for “chrome mac” is a message from Google that says it’s still in dev.
November 29, 2009 — 9:09 pm
Anonymous says:
Right. I’m running the dev version of chrome for mac
November 29, 2009 — 9:22 pm
Tom Royce says:
For the Windows bloggers I heartily recommend Blogjet.
The real benefits are offline blogging, easy picture insertion and uploading, a reasonable spell check, fast insertion of multimedia, and my favorite, the ability to have multiple posts in the works at one time.
One other benefit to Blogjet is the ability in Firefox to highlight the selected text and with a right click open Blogjet and it copies and paste the selection into a new post.
I have been using versions of the software for 4 years and heartily endorse it.
November 30, 2009 — 4:01 am
Al Lorenz says:
Thanks! Another great post on Bloodhound blog that will help make me more efficient.
November 30, 2009 — 10:15 am