sdm networks weblog

You can use a GTK+ tool called Drivel (see Image 1) or one called BloGTK to access your WordPress Blog and add posts (like this one). Alternatively there is a Gnome applet named gnome-blog that basically does the same (although Drivel is much more sophisticated). As you may have noticed I’m mentioning tools for Linux for I am using Linux as my primary Operating System (about 99% of my time). There exists a list of blogging tools for other OSs like Windows and MAC OS at the Wordpress Weblog Client Page.

How to install and use

Drivel is part of my distribution, namely Ubuntu, but it might be added in your distro too. Install it on debian based system with apt-get install drivel. To use Drivel with WordPress you have to choose the Movable Type API (Journal Type, see Image 2 at the left) and the full path to the xmlrpc.php file on your server (i.e. http://www.sdm-net.org/xmlrpc.php).

Editing

It is possible to edit your posts with Drivel. This is a nice feature, since you don’t have to load the whole HTML interface of WordPress. The only thing that goes over the net is the actual data (and some more information like login, method to be called, etc). Another benefit from this is you’ll never expire your session anymore, since you’re not using one. Although I haven’t been able to edit posts yet I’m going to do some experiments on that to find out why. And maybe some googling too :).

Conclusion

Use a non web-based client to post to your site if you’re short of internet traffic or if you have a slow connection. Writing a long article and expiring the session time could also be frustrating when using a web interface.