Top Free Offline Desktop Editor For Your Blog

A Desktop blogging editor, also known a Weblog client is a software that runs on your desktop and let you post to your blog via remote publishing XML-RPC specification. Think of a Weblog Client as the equivalent of an Email client such as Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird. Essentially, the Weblog client allows you to write a post offline; then you can publish it the next time you connect to the Internet.

A Desktop blogging editor is a stand-alone application that runs from your computer instead of logging into your blog. It makes your work much easier and more efficient since you don´t wait for pages to load and by the ability to publish to multiple blogs. There are many available blog editors. Most are paid while others are totally free. Some are browser-based while others are stand-alone desktop editors.

Why Offline Blogging? | Advantages of a Weblog Client

The advantages of a Weblog client are:

  1. Ability to write posts without having to go online. No Internet Reliance.
  2. A nicer and easier interface than the browser-based editors.
  3. Fancy formatting features.
  4. Features like posting to multiple blogs from one editor. Streamlining your blogging process.
  5. Faster to add images and videos.
  6. Ability to keep local/external backups.
  7. Producing all blog posts from a central location for easy management.
  8. More Efficient: eliminates the wait for your browser to load, for images and videos to upload, and for posts to save. Since everything is done on your local computer, the only time you have to wait for your internet connection is when you publish your final post.

My Experience With the browser-based WordPress Editor

I am still frustrated with the default WordPress editor, even though, when enhanced with plugins, it is improving nicely with new versions of WordPress. For self-hosted WordPress blogs, you will be more frustrated with writing and saving posts, if your database resides on a slow server.

WordPress automatically creates revisions of your posts. Whenever you save a post, the old version is retained so you can revert back at any time. This feature, also aggravate your online editing experience when using the dashboard editor. Refer to Tip7: Disable Revision Feature & Delete Existing Revisions from my previous tutorial for a solution.

When you use your WordPress dashboard editor, and depending on what browser you use, your experience might even get worse.

Criteria I followed For Choosing the Weblog Client

I followed four criteria for choosing the blogging editors which are:

  1. Stand-alone offline desktop application. Not a plugin or a browser extension.
  2. Completely Free. Not a paid version with a free trial.
  3. Still being improved, updated and maintained (at least since 2010).
  4. In my opinion, the best.

There are many Weblog Clients available and it can get confusing and difficult to figure out the best ones. But after an extensive research, reviews and personally trying several of them, I found out that there is only ONE that made the list. And the Top Free Offline Desktop Editor for Your Blog is: Windows Live Writer 2011.

Windows Live Writer 2011

Windows Live Writer 2011

  1. Visit Website
  2. Operating Systems: Windows Vista, Windows 7
  3. Price: Free
  4. Supports: WordPress, Share Point, TypePad, Blogger and others.
  5. Does Not Support: MySpace blogs and FaceBook notes.

Short Review

Microsoft´s Windows Live Writer is an excellent desktop blog editor for PC users. It offers a wealth of features such as WYSIWYG authoring, photo publishing, video publishing and map publishing functionality, time stamping, tagging, categories, complete selection of fonts, and more. It is feature-rich and easy to use. Best of all, its functionality is enhanced by the many free plugins available. It enables instant previews and I also like the source view screen. It is simple and adaptable. I hope that you try it out.

To Publish posts through Windows Live Writer 2011 you need to enable the XML-RPC. For WordPress blogs, version 2.6 and above, the XML-RPC is disabled by default. To enable XML-RPC in WordPress log into your WordPress dashboard, then go to Settings->Writing and check the box as shown in the image below:

WordPress Remote Publishing Setting for XML-PRC specification.

More Reviews

Why Other Desktop Blog Editors Were NOT Considered

I did not include other free Weblog Clients in my top list for several reasons:

  1. Some are very old. I consider any blog editor not released or updated in 2010 to be old. They lack better performance, better security and new features. The Web technology is rapidly evolving. Think about it. Do you want a software released years ago, or you want an editor that is current and follows the latest Web and security standards with new and improved features?
  2. As for the Mac OS, there are many more paid desktop blogging editors that offer free trials. I did not consider any of those, since they are not totally free.
  3. To be fair: I don´t have a Linux OS. Therefore; I could not personally test the desktop blog editors for Linux, especially GNOME blog, GScribble and Blogilo. But from the extensive reviews I read, they did not appeal to me. I will let you decide if one of these applications will best suite your blogging needs.

Desktop Blog Editors for: Windows OS

  1. BlogDesk – Last Updated: February 2009
  2. w.bloggar – Last Updated: December 2007
  3. Zoundry Raven – Last Updated: August 2008

Desktop Blog Editors for: Linux

  1. BloGTK – Last Updated: August 2009
  2. GNOME blog – Last Updated: March 2010
  3. GScribble – Last Updated: December 2010
  4. Blogilo – Last Updated: February 2010

Desktop Blog Editor for: Windows | Mac | Linux

  1. QTM – Last Updated: Sept. 2010

Desktop Blog Editor for: Windows | Mac

  1. Qumana – Last Updated: December 2008

Which Offline Desktop Blog Editor I Use

Believe it or not, I use the Code View of Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is not free, but I have been using it for several years and it is much easier for me to just write the post in Dreamweaver and when it is ready for publishing, I copy and paste it in the WordPress dashboard editor. I am a hand-coder, I am much more comfortable writing the code by hand as opposed to WYSIWYG editors.

Sometimes I also use Notepad++ which is a free source code editor. With all that said, I am very impressed with Windows Live Writer 2011, and I will start using it for writing and editing future posts. I am glad it has the “Source” screen. Windows Live Writer is one of very few Microsoft products that I like. I wish I can say the same for their Web browser including IE9.

Your Turn to Talk

You now know the Top free Weblog Client available nowadays which is unfortunately only compatible with Windows. I wish there are more free choices especially for the Mac Operating System, or at least the free available ones are still being updated regularly.

If you think I missed a desktop blogging editor, or you have something to add or anything else to say, please share your opinion in the comments section. Your opinion matters, unless it is a Spam.

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About the Author |
Boutros is a professional Drupal & WordPress developer, Web developer, Web designer, Software Engineer and Blogger. He strives for pixel perfect design, clean robust code, and user-friendly interface. If you have a project in mind and like his work, feel free to contact him. Connect with Boutros on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Visit Boutros AbiChedid Website.

2 Responses to “Top Free Offline Desktop Editor For Your Blog”

  1. Tom Dotz says:

    Hi Boutros,
    I just came across your blog and want to thank you for several interesting and useful articles (breadcrumbs,caching for two :)

    Most of my experience with MS products is that they load a lot of “garbage” code. In your experience, does Windows Live Writer do this?
    What advantages have you found over just using Word for offline blogging?

    Cheers,
    Tom

    • Hi Tom,
      Thank you for your comment.
      I agree with you on MS products, they always over do it. Too many unnecessary options that the majority of users don’t even use or know about.
      Even though there is a ‘blog’ option for MS Word, Windows Live Writer is much better. First Windows Live Writer is FREE (and this is the point of my post). MS Doc is not Free.
      Windows Live Writer is made for blogging (much better at incorporating images, links, there is a live preview option, better for accessibility, you can see the source code of your post, you can connect and publish to several blog platforms, and many other features).
      Frankly I am not even sure why there is a ‘Blog’ option in MS Doc, this is a case where Microsoft adds too many options in an application. I bet that most bloggers don’t even know that you can publish from MS doc.
      But at the end, it all depends what application you are used to the most. If you are used to MS doc for blogging then that’s fine.
      If you ask many professional bloggers, they probably will agree with me that Windows Live Writer is the Top FREE one available.
      For more Info. see another post: http://bacsoftwareconsulting.com/blog/index.php/web-development/6-reasons-to-use-windows-live-writer-for-blogging/

      PS. I just turned my Blog to a “DoFollow” Blog and you are the first one. I’ll be writing a post about it soon.
      Boutros.