Seeking Alternative to Windows Live Writer

If you don’t like the WP editor or Live Writer, some other popular PC blogware include ScribeFire, BlogDesk, Zoundry Raven, BlogJet, RocketPost, BLoGTK, and Drivel. There are many more as well.

Not sure how you define “better” but after using many of the aforementioned products, I personally use the WP editor.

Hello Gabe,

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll take a look. And, yes, ‘better’ is highly subjective<g>.

WP Editor’s not bad, not bad at all for what it is, but it’s still not as feature rich as a desktop client. Even so, WLW clearly has it’s own limitations.

Cheers!

Update:
The ‘official’ Zoundry Raven page is still online. However -all- the download links are dysfunctional. Further, in January ’09 they posted a notice that they were making it open source and effectively abandoning it.

There are no open source updates posted. The product appears to be abandoned for 4 years now.

FYI.

I haven’t used Zoundry Raven in a while but open source does not necessarily mean terrible. Again, depending on what you’re looking for, this could be a candidate.

Also, I was able to find a link in case you want to try it: Zoundry Raven download.

Hi Gabe,

Tried your link but, as with the rest, get a 404. Raven doesn’t seem to exist any more.

I’ve worked through the list and, in the interest of providing an update (and saving others similar sleuthing effort), here’s what I’ve found:

* BlogGTK is also dead. No activity of any kind since 9/26/2010.

* RocketPost, also an ‘essentially’ dead product. Anconia’s not supporting it and the reviews, well, let’s just say unfriendly is putting it mildly.

* BlogJet, pleasant enough looking app, seems a direct equal to Live Writer. Free to try, but $40. Considering it’s equal to WLW…

* BlogDesk – Seems most interesting of the bunch. Installs and configures very easily. Interface text is a bit hard to read (Win 3.1’ish). Unfortunately it’s not quite WYSIWYG. Or, at least it’s not compatible with what I’m doing in WP. Throws off a lot of spurious characters when opening any of my prior posts.

* ScribeFire’s clearly the best of the bunch. Unfortunately it’s browser-based. As such it’s only partially functional if you’re offline. That said, since I’m ‘generally’ online when writing, I’m going to dig in. What I’ve found initially is that it’s -very- fast interacting with my WP server. As in, never-seen-anything-quite-this-fast-before type interaction while blogging.

Cheers!

jtpedersen,
I agree with you, WLW clearly has it’s own limitations, but AFAIK it is the only blog-publishing application available. What I can’t understand is why M$ doesn’t listen to users suggestions in order to improve the product and why they never answer queries appropriately. Besides there are very few plugins available and just a couple of them are really useful.

It would be great if WordPress developers code a desktop blog-publishing application similar to WLW.

Surely , it would be exciting and very helpful if WordPress/Automattic develop a desktop tool like Live Writer.