Windows Live Writer is a good alternative to this. Photo by Zsuzsanna Kilian.
Over at Self Starters Weekly Tips, there’s a discussion going on about desktop publishing solutions for WordPress. I generally write my blog posts in a text document, then copy and paste into WordPress, upload a picture, add some links, and I’m done. I’ve tried some desktop solutions in the past, but I’ve never been satisfied with them – particularly with how they handle images. But, after reading the opinions about Windows Live Writer, I decided to give it one more shot.
So far, I’m pretty impressed. I installed it at 11:52, and I’m writing this at 12:03, so the setup is quick and easy. All you have to do is give Windows Live Writer your URL, user name, and password, and it goes out and collects all the information it needs, including the css file, making this a true WYSIWYG editor, right down to the fonts and paragraph spacing.
I do have some custom stuff going on in my blogs, mostly having to do with images and thumbnails, and mostly related to Thesis. There is also SEO stuff, like title tags, meta-descriptions, and excerpts that can’t be handled by Windows Live Writer. For those things, I need to get to my WordPress dashboard, so rather than just hitting publish, I’ll still end up publishing all my posts as drafts and then going into WordPress for the final clean-up. Overall, though, that’s not such a big price to pay for not having to deal with the WYSIWYG editor that comes with WordPress.
One other thing I really like about Windows Live Writer is the ability to automagically include links in my posts. Like that link up there to SSWT. I didn’t have to enter that – WLW did it for me. Set up your keywords and matching links, and when you highlight the phrase you want to link to and click the link button, WLW fills in the blanks for you.
Okay, there’s a dark side, too. (It wouldn’t be a Microsoft project without a dark side.) Here’s the thing: the damn thing tried to hijack my whole computer! It tried to set Bing as my default search engine – and helpfully offered to prevent any other program from changing that setting later. Um, no. The default set-up also wants to install a bunch of toolbars and other software, and make your homepage MSN. Again, no. So be careful if you install this, and make sure you uncheck anything you don’t want.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with it, and I will likely continue to use it.
What about you? Do you use a desktop publishing program to manage your blogs? Why or why not?
In the past, I’ve run into some horrendous problems with images. Choice of themes definitely do make a difference. My process of writing and adding images is pretty similar to what yours was.
I’ll definitely try this one out. Thanks for the “meaty” post!