So why the FARG to part 4 take so long? I said it would boil down to the tools I use, therefore, I had to make sure I gave all the options a fair shake and really come up with an objective list of lean, mean, blogging productivity tools. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard right? I mean aren’t all blogs accessed via a web browser? Umm… er… uh… well… editing a post in a browser sucks! It’s slow, counter intuitive, inherently unstable (if your connection is lost, so too is your post), and on and on and on… In a pinch, or for casual blogging this is the way to go, but it you are in any way serious, you need to consider some desktop alternatives:

1. TextEdit – if you have nothing else at hand on your local computer then at least consider using TextEdit to compose and safely save your work in progress.

2. MarsEdit – I played with this one a bit. It’s well put together, easy to use, and doesn’t go over board with the features. It’s an editor, manager, publisher all in one, so if need be, you wouldn’t need any other tool.

3. Ecto – This one is a bit spotty. It’s powerful, has a cult following, it’s extensible, but it always seems as though the developer has his priorities elsewhere. I will use this over MarsEdit simply because of it’s ability to have most aspects of it’s templates and snippets edited to suit your own preferences. It earns points for it’s geekery.

4. RapidWeaver – You might think this recommendation is a bit much… a complete web development platform for the single purpose of posting to a blog? Well, on it’s own there is merit for such an argument; host a blog anywhere you like, have it look any way you want with the hundreds of available free and commercial theme designs, host as many blogs as you want without having to know sql, myphp, or go through any convoluted server-side installation process each time. RapidWeaver isn’t just a blogging client that integrates into one of the available blogging platforms… it IS the platform. If RapidWeaver on it’s own is not enough, add to it the amazing plugin from Loghound, RapidBlog, and you have a do anything, go anywhere blogging system with unprecedented control that can be both edited from the comfort of your desktop or from any remote location you happened to find yourself in.

5. TextMate – Are you are the ultimate geek who needs the ultimate power with the fastest, most productive editing tool known to man kind? You need to be blogging with TextMate! You need to be doing everything with TextMate, your coding, developing, editing, your laundry, picking up the groceries, etc… The only app on my machine that gets more time in use is Safari, but TextMate runs a close second. Name the A – Z of coding, markup or scripting languages and TextMate does it and then some. Right, so what has this got to do with blogging. Right out of the preverbal box, TextMate has some pretty cool blogging features that allow you to post to one or many blogs, but add a nifty little plugin called BlogMate from Todd Ditchendorf, and TextMate becomes my number one choice for blogging clients. Here is why; I can type any word, hit some hot-keys and TextMate will find the most relevant URL and title for that word and create a link in whatever language I happen to be writing in, like HTML or Markdown. I can also post to nearly any blogging platform I want, which is good for me since I use WordPress, Blogger, Jaiku, Twitter and have been known to use a host of other platforms in the past. If you are serious about blogging from a mac, you want to consider my number one choice for blogging… TextMate!

I hope you have found this little series on blogging helpful. Hopefully you can take what you have learned here and apply it to your own blog.

Tags: app, blogger, blogging, blogs, computer, create, design, develop, developer, development, html, jaiku, mac, marsedit, os x, php, plugin, rapidweaver, remote, safari, software, textmate, twitter, web, wordpress, writing