Comments on: General Tips for easier blogging – Tuesday Tips #5

By: Summarise! | Counting Beans

Summarise! | Counting Beans — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:35:25 +0000

[...] read quite a good post by Lester from Afrigator that’s given me some real nifty ideas for future blogging so [...]

By: http://rachelkovacs.blogspot.com

http://rachelkovacs.blogspot.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:13:55 +0000

Thanks for the article. Very helpful. I’m a publisher myself and I always like to read articles like yours.

By: onelargeprawn

onelargeprawn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:50:02 +0000

Lol I guess – as long as you can drink them all in one night ;-P Then you truly will be a battle-hardened gator!

By: Lester Hein

Lester Hein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:46:18 +0000

@onelargeprawn, I’ve already started on the review post, and will hopefully have it ready for next Tuesday. Just worried that I won’t give all the apps an accurate representation!

As for the beers, will that be one for every tip?

By: onelargeprawn

onelargeprawn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:51:25 +0000

@Lester: If you have time, a quick tutorial on how to write a basic post using each app would be most useful.

BTW, these tips are very handy so thanks a bunch for doing them. Remind us to buy you some beers when you get to tip #111

By: Lester Hein

Lester Hein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:40:08 +0000

I’m giving Ecto a go on the mac and Windows Live Writer on the PC. Will let you guys know how things go.

By: Willem

Willem — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:49:43 +0000

I 100% agree with using a text editor rather than a word processor to draft your blog posts – modern word processors are more typesetting applications than writing applications.

I use TextEdit (it’s to OS X what Notepad is to Windows) on my Mac to collect notes while researching articles, rewrite the notes as a draft in another TextEdit window, add some HTML markup, and only then copy everything to Wordpress’ HTML editor. I do final revisioning and styling (such as links and images) in Wordpress’ Visual editor so I can preview the post with each change, then either schedule or publish it.

Mac users can try blogging software such as MarsEdit (http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/) or Blogo (http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/). Both will store local (offline) drafts, but are paid apps. However, I’ve used them in the past and would definitely recommend them to non-HTML-savvy bloggers.

BBEdit (http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/) is another great text editor that is extremely extensible, but it doesn’t have Blogo’s nice user interface or MarsEdit’s ease of use.

By: Lester Hein

Lester Hein — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:41:15 +0000

Good points guys, I hadn’t thought of offline editors when I was writing this. I think there are some pretty good ones out there.

I write my blogs in a text editor and do most of the basic HTML by hand (img, a href, blockquote, p, etc) but I think for a new blogger on a slow connection an offline editor is definitely a good option. Might be a cool blogpost to check out two or three for mac and a couple for windows.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

By: onelargeprawn

onelargeprawn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:28:17 +0000

You can also use Windows Live Writer to create blog posts offline and then publish them later.

http://en.wordpress.com/windows-live-writer/

By: Theresa Carpenter Sondjo

Theresa Carpenter Sondjo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:17:03 +0000

I’ve recently started using offline blog editors, like Windows Live Writer or BlogDesk (both available in several languages). Especially with the crazy poor connections on the continent, being able to publish without having to log into my blogging platform of choice is awesome (oh, WordPress, why are you so sllloooooowwwwwww?). And with so many people logging in via cybercafes, there are few that also work from USB keys, like Zoundry’s Raven.

It’s so much easier for me to get excited about blogging when I don’t have to worry about a flaky connection getting in the way.