Every Flavour Beans

The feature announced to be included in the next version of Wordpress that had excited me the most was the Post Revisioning feature that was set for the Wordpress 2.6 release. After having used 2.6 version for so many days, I finally had a taste of its usefulness today. (Even though I didn’t get to use it much until now, the peace of mind that you get to carry while editing the posts makes the feature worth every effort put in by the Wordpress development team).

I did nothing strange on this occasion: while editing and saving and editing and saving and… a draft post, I opened another related, older post in a new browser tab and made a few changes to that post too. Just forgot to save it! I don’t remember when I had closed that tab as my focus was on my current draft post. When I opened the older post again after sometime, Wordpress displayed a notice informing me that there is a newer auto-saved version of the post available:

Auto-saving posts/drafts is old news. But near the bottom of the page, I could see the complete history of my edits, the relevant date and time information included:

Clicking on “View the autosave” link(see the first screenshot above) took me to the automatically saved version of the page. Scrolling down the page took me to “Post Revisions” section where I could select the versions that I want to compare:

And finally, I was able to view the two versions side-by-side to see the difference between the two versions visually(click the image to see the larger version):

(Bonus: What happens if you compare the same versions of a post? Wordpress 2.6 Easteregg!)

A click of a button switched the post to the autosave version(because that’s what I had wanted):

And the post was restored:

(I didn’t have to worry a lot when restoring because I can always go back to the earlier version because all the revisions are still there.)

Nothing that I didn’t know already but actually going through the process and being able to save those few edits that would have been lost into thin air(or difficult to restore) in earlier versions of Wordpress was quite a bit of fun. The whole experience was seamless and tension-free.

Just sharing the excitement ;)

Finally took the bite and tried out the upgrading process of my Wordpress blog using the Wordpress automatic upgrade plugin. Tried it directly with my main blog with not even a single test run before this.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
The whole process was relatively smooth and void of many surprises. I wish that the output messages from each test were accumulated together and displayed somewhere(a right sidebar?) so that it gives some structure to the upgrade progress and also keeps links to important downloads always visible.

The place the plugin broke-down was when re-activating all the plugins once the upgrade process was complete. I got the error message asking me if I am sure repeat the action. It never budged even an inch from there, so I quit it and activated all my plugins one by one manually for almost fifteen frustrating minutes. Reason? Wordpress doesn’t only takes its own time but also refreshes the whole page for every plugin activation. Why not do the operation asynchronously? At least the location on the page where I am working will not be lost this way, saving me the constant scrolling.

My one complain with the Wordpress Automatic plugin is that it doesn’t allow my own Wordpress archive to be uploaded and used instead of the “latest” version automatically downloaded from Wordpress.org. It’s a good default value for those who can’t be bothered but I would definitely like to use a Subversion Wordpress package for my blog. I have been using the svn install method for over an year and it makes the minor upgrades such a breeze that I got totally used to it. And in one fluid motion, automatic upgrade plugin replaced my svn install with the normal one before I could realise what I was going to lose.

I also realised that there is only “Deactivate All Plugins” link on the “Plugins” page where as I would like to see a “Remember Currently Active Plugins and Then Deactivate All Plugins” option so that we can restore the previously active ones with a single click.

There were some excellent suggestions about very good blog editors for the GNU/Linux platform provided in the comments section of my previous post Five Desktop Blog Editors for GNU/Linux Users. So much so that I have decided to compile a second list of desktop blog editors for GNU/Linux platform. All the credit goes to those who have commented on my previous posts and I will note the name of each commenter against the suggestion they have had made.

Flock’s Blog Editor

also suggested by Moulinneuf

I was sad for having to missing out Flock’s built-in Blog Poster in my previous list and the main reason for not including it then was that ScribeFire extension works with Flock too and it is in my opinion a more mature product at this time. Flock’s Blog Poster has some unique features though, not found in any other blog editor:
- No need to manually add your blog accounts; just sign into your accounts and Flock will add them automatically!
- Great integration with Flickr, Youtube and other similar web services
- Collect the stuff over a period of time in “Web Clipboard”(another great feature in Flock) and then use it in your blog post by simple dragging and dropping.

Thingamablog

suggested by Mace Moneta

I found Thingamablog to be the most feature rich blog editor for GNU/Linux(it runs on multiple platforms). It shows the preview of a post in true web browser style(completely working on a desktop) and you can pick one of the multiple themes that come with it. I haven’t spent a lot of time with it(but will do in future) but I am guessing that making it support the theme of my original blog should definitely be possible. Now that would be cooler than Windows Live Writer(which has a similar feature) :) The development of this product seems to have resumed recently and a problem I faced with it was solved by its creator over email in no time. I wish it good luck.

JBlogEditor

suggested by Phillip Rhodes

JBlogEditor is written in Java but still boasts of a great interface, unlike Thingamablog or Breezer(according to my taste). Have a look at some of the screenshots.

JBlogEditor’s Feature List

QTM for KDE Users

suggested by Andrew Min

QTM is a great blog editor for the KDE users but you will be surprised to see how well it runs even on the GNOME desktop. You can’t differentiate it from the other native GNOME applications! You can keep it in either GNOME or KDE panel for quick access.
KBlogger is another blog poster for that sits in KDE panel for quick access.

Bleezer

suggested by Alex Bogak

Couldn’t get Bleezer running on my GNU/Linux system. Shot an email to the creator and still waiting for a response. The feature set described on the website is impressive. Supposedly works with the new Blogger too! Have a look at its website and give it a try if you think you might like it. Let me know if it runs on your JRE. Here is an old screenshot[from http://larryborsato.com/bleezer] to give you an idea about it:

Update:
Bobrik has a very good post(Russian) on the same topic. If you have liked this post, I strongly recommend reading bobrik’s post too.
English Translation (or do your own translation)

Andy suggests logjam. Some screenshots of logjam are here.

Deepest Sender blog editor runs as an extension in Firefox web browser as well as an XUL standalone application. [via oddn1x]

If you want to post to a Blosxom weblog, then GNOME Blosxom is for you. [via gfiles]

End Notes

How big a fan are you of using a product that is no more in active development? Say a product has not been updated for the past 1-2 years, would you still use it? I try not to, even if it has more features than a product that is under active development. Some of the applications mentioned above, and mentioned in my previous post, are no longer under active development, so make your own call about them.

Got any more comments about the above mentioned blog editors?

Ask ten bloggers at random what they use to compose their blog posts and chances are that you might get ten different answers to that. Possible options include integrated WYSIWYG editor provided by the blogging software itself; desktop blog clients for Windows like w.bloggar and Windows Live Writer; Word processors like MS Office/OpenOffice; Web based blog composers like Google Docs; Emacs, web browser extensions, sidebar/desktop widgets and things like that. It’s the “to each his own” philosophy in full flow here.

For the GNU/Linux users though, the options are pretty limited and I am yet to see a full-blown, feature-rich desktop blog editor that could post to most of the popular blogging engines that are out there. But all is not lost when it comes to blogging tools for GNU/Linux; there are quite a few options and all of them fulfill certain blogging needs to near perfection. Below I am going to discuss five different ways to compose your blog posts on the GNU/Linux platform along with their pros and cons.

All of them can be installed using apt-get or aptitude on Debian/Ubuntu based distributions and can be compiled from the sources on others(first check with the package manager of your distribution before compiling from the source).

Five Blogging Editors to Make Blog Posts From the GNU/Linux platform

1. GNOME Blog Entry Poster

   Blog Entry Poster is all about convenience and efficiency. It lacks in features but if you want to make a quick post about a news item/article/announcement that you have read on the Internet, then this panel applet can make it as fast as any other tool. To use it, install it from your favourite package manager or download and compile it from the source, and then right-click on the GNOME panel, select Add to Panel from the menu and finally select “Blog Entry Poster” from the dialog box. You can configure settings by right-clicking on the “Blog” dropdown button that you can now see on your panel and selecting “Preferences” from the menu. Select the type of your blog engine, enter its web location, enter the user name and password and click the “Look up Blogs” button. It should fetch your blog and show it in the dropdown box to the left side of “Look up Blogs” button. Click the “Close” button to save the settings.

   Now whenever you come across an interesting story on the Internet, you can just click the “Blog” button on the panel, give a title to the blog post, enter the contents and hit the “Post Entry” button. You have some very basic formatting available to add links, format to bold and italics etc., but as noted earlier, this is not the tool to use if you are looking for a lot of features. You have to use HTML tags to do all your formatting and you can’t even preview before posting. But I find this to be the quickest way to make a short blog post. (Clicking the “Blog” button in the panel again closes the dropdown window, but the text you have entered is still retained in it. Click it again to see what I talking about. This allows you to edit the blog entry over a long period of time.)
   
   Gnome Blog Home page

2. Drivel Journal Editor

   You will love to make blog posts with Drivel if you are a LiveJournal user. This one has quite a few interesting features for users of all type of blog engines but it has tons of features specifically provided for the LiveJournal bloggers. I haven’t found such a good LiveJournal blog editor even on Windows; it allows you to select a mood, set the music you are currently listening to, set custom security and bunch of other stuff while making a post to LiveJournal. It is a decent blog editor for other blogging software too, including Wordpress, Movable Type and Blogger. Definitely worth a test drive.
   
   More information on Drivel

3. BloGTK Blog Editor

   This is a reasonably feature-rich blog editor for the GNOME platform. It supports many popular blogging engines and has good number of formatting option. My personal favourite feature of BloGTK is the ability to create our own custom tags for HTML tags that are not available by default in the BloGTK toolbar/menu. To start posting blog entries, go to Edit -> Accounts and Settings, enter the details about your blog, click OK, go to the File menu and click the Connect menu item. You are now ready to publish to your blog. The main view of BloGTK shows HTML mixed with the content(unlike Drivel that uses WYSISWYG editor) but it supports the preview mode, so no worries there. You can’t use BloGTK with the new Blogger version yet.
   
   More about BloGTK




4. ScribeFire Firefox Extension

   If you are basically looking for at least the basic set of features that one expects from a blog editor and are not put down by the web browser interface, then ScribeFire Firefox extension(previously called Performancing for Firefox or PFF) is an excellent choice for you. It has more features than any of the above mentioned desktop clients, you don’t have to be online to compose blog posts with it just like a desktop blog editor, it has a very clean user interface and installing it is a total snap as you don’t have to worry whether your GNU/Linux distribution packages it or not, or if you have to build something from the source. As it is a Firefox extension, installing it is as easy as going to the ScribeFire extension page and clicking the “Install” button. You can install it in all Firefox compatible web browsers(e.g. Flock). After installation, click its icon in the status bar of the browser and a window will pop-up which covers the lower part of your browser window. You can hide it and re-activate it at will, making small edits to your content while surfing the Internet to collect more information, and, once finished, finally posting it to your blog or saving it as a note locally.
   
   Getting Started with ScribFire Blog Editor

5. Google Docs as a Blog Editor

   The last option I am going to mention is Google Docs. I love its clean interface and use it to keep a lot of content on various topics in separate document files in the draft form. But when I am almost ready to post it to my blog, I take it over to the integrated editor of Wordpress and do the final editing/formatting there. Some people though prefer to do all the editing in Google Docs itself and either copy/paste to the blog web editor in the end or post to the blog directly from Google Docs by selecting Publish from the top-right corner and clicking the “Post to Blog” button. Google Docs is a good option if you use it for other editing purposes too, or to post to multiple blogs, but for posting to only one type of blog, there’s no clear advantage in using it over the blog engine’s own WYSIWYG editor.
   
   Google Docs as a Blog Editor

You can install (1), (2) and (3) on Debian/Ubuntu by running the following commands respectively:

With (4) and (5), you can learn one interface and use it on any platform.

So what else is there to fulfill other blog posting needs of the GNU/Linux users? I will be particularly interested to hear what Blog Editors do the KDE users use - someone had mentioned KBlogger but I don’t know how good or bad it is.

Update 1: Thanks to all those who have commented on this post, here is the summary of all the blog editors that were suggested by you: Five More Desktop Blog Editors for GNU/Linux Users

Update 2: Here are two more posts related to the same topic of GNU/Linux desktop blog editors:
Linux Blogging Sucks (it’s well written, not a rant)
Building The Blog Editor List (all blog editors, including for GNU/Linux)

It was exciting to read about the new feature of Wordpress 2.3 where it gives notifications as soon as the updated versions of Wordpress core and the plugins are released. When I logged into my Wordpress 2.3 administration dashboard today, I got my first notification of an updated core version released! (Not news to me though, as the wp-testers list keeps me updated.)

At the top:

In the footer:

Wordpress 2.3.1 was released a few hours ago and some of the bugs that it fixes are:

• ‘Blogroll -> Import Links’ bug - #5107.
• Faster tag intersection search queries - #5137. Ryan Boren has written a good article on tag intersections.
• Manifest file for WLW to enable tag support in it - #5023.
• Incorrect behaviour when posting via email that contains hyphen(s) - #5169

Other bugs fixed.
Also read westi’s post.

Fixes the security issue related to “an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled.”

A quick upgrade guide is available on the Wordpress Codex. Detailed instructions are also available, in case you have never upgraded Wordpress before.

If you, like me, had installed Wordpress 2.3 by directly checking out from the Subversion repository, you can upgrade by simply running this from the console:

Substitute the path to your Wordpress installation path in place of <your-blog-directory>. Then run http://<your-blog-address>/wp-admin/upgrade.php as usual.
More information on Subversion upgrade.