About a week ago I found a post on Digg where the poster mentioned WordPress clients.  I use WordPress for my blog so I figured I'd give what he had to say a read.  Basically he was trying to find a decent Windows application that served as a stand-alone blogging client, something he would be able to use to write blog posts separately from WordPress' WYSIWYG editor, and then upload to the server.  He rounded up about 5 different alternatives, none of which I am currently using.  The reason is that in one of the comments a Digg user suggested trying out a free program Microsoft has called Windows Live Writer.  I installed it, set it up, and now it's what I use to create all of my blog posts.

windowslivewriter

Having a program like this is pretty essential if you work with WordPress because their editor is...well...garbage.  Don't get me wrong, WordPress as a whole is an awesome CMS with a lot of valuable features that are relatively easy to use but when it comes to content creation it lacks quite a bit.  With something like Windows Live Writer though, you're able to work in an almost Microsoft Word-like environment which makes things much nicer.  What I have the most trouble with are both finding and including the images I put in some blog posts as well as going through after the fact and linking all of the words I want to have linked.  It's not that these are particularly difficult to do with the stock WordPress editor, but they take longer than is necessary to complete.  Now I find myself finishing up posts a lot quicker than I was before.

Live Writer is easy to install, just like any other application you might find on the net.  There's no Genuine Advantage verification required or Microsoft updates that need to be applied, so it installs just like a normal program.  Then, once it installs, it walks you through a few steps so it can sync with your blog and you're good to go.  That was the part that impressed me the most about it.  Live Writer is meant to be able to work with a lot of different blogging services like Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, and of course WordPress.  All I had to do was give it the URL of my blog and it went ahead and pinged it, found out automatically that it was a WordPress blog, and then - after prompting me for my login information - it pulled down my theme and everything right into the program.  Because of this I now have a true WYSIWYG editor, because the "document" for lack of a better term which I work in while writing the post has my blog's theme pre-applied, so without even saving and especially without publishing the post I already know what it will look like once it's live.  That's pretty handy.

The only problem I have left is that now I'm stuck on my Vista box whenever I want to write a post.  I used to use my laptop exclusively for this, I'd write in an app called WriteRoom, copy and paste what I wrote into the WordPress editor, and then add the images and links.  Now I have to be sitting at my desk to get anything written which is much less desirable than sitting in front of the TV on the couch.  So here's where I do a bit of crowd sourcing (I just made myself laugh a little, comparing my blog's audience to a crowd was a bit of an over exaggeration I think).  If anyone knows of a good OS X or Ubuntu 7.04 WordPress blogging client I'd love to test it out.  Post your recommendations as a comment, and keep this couch potato where he belongs!  =P

Currently Listening To: The Pogues - If I Should Fall from Grace with God
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