blogging software?

October 5, 2006 4:57 PM

Are there any wysiwyg blog post editors? All I know if is semagic for live journal. Is there any general tool that lets you post blog entries to different systems (like word press or movable type) Anything where you can drag in photos and stuff? Is flock what I'm thinking of?

Basically I'm thinking of a tool that automates away most of the annoying things about blog posting. So you can type a blog entry, and drag in a picture or video, and the picture would be uploaded to flickr or wherever, the video to youtube, and the blog would be posted with the correct links. Anything like that exist?

posted by delmoi to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I am not usually a pro-Microsoft guy, but the only idea I can give you is to checkout the reviews of the Windows Live Writer, though the referenced article has some alternatives you might want to look into.
posted by SirStan at 5:14 PM on October 5, 2006

I don't know if it's wysiwyg for sure, as I've never used it, but ecto seems to come up a lot in these discussions.
posted by danb at 5:18 PM on October 5, 2006

Haven't used it, and it looks like it doesn't have the drag-n-drop photo goodness you want, but WriteToMyBlog is a replacement post editor that is compatible with quite a few different blogging systems.

It was just discussed on LifeHacker.
posted by IvyMike at 5:19 PM on October 5, 2006

MarsEdit is a wysiwyg weblog editor that lets you post to WordPress, MovableType, etc. It does image and file uploading, too. It's for OS X, not sure what OS you use.
posted by jdl at 5:19 PM on October 5, 2006

Wbloggar?
posted by oxford blue at 5:20 PM on October 5, 2006

Yes, danb, ecto is a WYSIWYG blogging tool. I use it to maintain several blogs from one place. I'm always dragging in images, and you can resize them direct from the editor. It then uploads properly resized versions to your server(s). Works perfectly and while I use it on OS X, it's also available on Windows.

It's pretty much neck and neck with MarsEdit, with both having slightly different pros and cons. I can't remember what they are now, but know that ecto was the best choice for me at the time. ecto also supports Technorati tagging, turning on/off trackback & comments, and things like that. It supports multiple blogging systems too and you can easily manage multiple blogs with it.
posted by wackybrit at 5:38 PM on October 5, 2006

bleezer claims to be a cross-platform cross-cms wysiwyg blog post editor. I haven't used it, I stumbled across the author's site searching for local bloggers, but the guy seems quite clueful.
posted by cCranium at 6:39 PM on October 5, 2006

If you have Firefox, get Performancing. Works with Movable Type, WordPress, Windows Live Spaces, Blogger.com, and I think a few more; it has integrated Technorati and Del.icio.us support, and an image upload to FTP feature. It also is WYSIWYG. I absolutely love it!
posted by IndigoRain at 7:04 PM on October 5, 2006

Ecto, for sure.
posted by jxpx777 at 9:02 PM on October 5, 2006

Windows Live Writer is very good, and Adobe's new version of Contribute is excellent. Lots of people use Ecto (especially Mac users), and I've heard good things about Performancing as well. Qumana is fairly full-featured, as well.

All of these tools have more features than semagic, and I can vouch that all work well with LiveJournal, Movable Type, and TypePad, since I work with the teams that make and test those platforms.
posted by anildash at 12:43 AM on October 7, 2006

Based on this thread, I downloaded ecto, and it's pretty awesome. I recommend it.
posted by danb at 8:11 AM on October 8, 2006