Dmitry Chestnykh, creator of BlogJet has just released the beta version of BlogJet 1.2. The current release version is BlogJet 1.1.x. Let me say right off the bat that I really love this tool. There aren't many blog editors available that will allow you to publish to multiple blogs and manage that blog content remotely from a single tool as easily as BlogJet. However, I'm sure that will change as blogging becomes even more popular and the need for this type of solution becomes more readily apparent.

BlogJet is a blog editor and as such, it is a windows software client that allows to you write, publish, and edit content for multiple blogs. If you are familiar Microsoft Word, then you will find BlogJet very intuitive when using it.

Installation and Configuration

From the start BlogJet is a simple download at 8mb and is a cinch to install. Once installed the Account Wizard steps you through the process of setting up an account. Chances are you will be using a blog software version supported by BlogJet. BlogJet supports the following blog software used to create blog sites:

Blogger, B2, BlogHarbor, Blogware, DasBlog, DeadJournal, LiveJournal, Lockergnome.net, MovableType, PMachine, and Squarespace.

If your blog host or blog sofware version isn't listed, BlogJet also supports the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API and MovableType API to custom configure BlogJet for compatibility. You'll need to check the documentation for your blog software platform to which API's are supported.

An API or Application Programming Interface allows one piece of software to talk to another piece of software. In this case the API is what allows BlogJet to talk to and understand your blog software platform allowing you to edit and publish posts remotely from your windows computer.

Once you've selected your supported blog software platform or supported API in BlogJet, you provide the username and password for your account. If it is a custom setup, you may need to provide the custom URL as well. The Account Wizard walks you step-by-step. After you provide account credentials you can optionally setup FTP and Image Upload locations.

Publishing a Blog with BlogJet 1.2 Beta

Publishing with BlogJet is a snap. For anyone like myself who is publishing and supporting multiple blogs BlogJet is a Godsend. It simply makes blogging easy and fun. With BlogJet I can create content offline and save it to a file that BlogJet can open at a later time when I'm ready to publish online. Offline composition provides an easy way to have back up copies of important content as well.

BlogJet gives you three (3) views to work with when you are writing content. You have the Normal which is the WYSIWYG view, the Code view which allows you to work directly with raw HTML code for formatting and lastly is the Properties view with allows you to set certain properties of your posts before you publish to your server.

BlogJet provides a screen shots page which gives you a visual on the BlogJet interface.

To begin publishing, all you need to do is write your content. The WYSIWYG interface allows you layout content and images alike within the same post. This makes putting graphics and content in the same post a pleasure especially for novice users not familiar with HTML code used to insert graphic with text.

Once your content is written you have several options available for what to do next. You can save your blog post as a BlogJet file for retrieval at a later time. You can Post & Publish directly to your blog make your post immediately available to the public on your blog site or you can Post As Draft which simply copies your content to your blog but saves it as a draft instead of making it publicly available on your blog.

New to BlogJet 1.2 Beta is the addition of the properties view I mentioned above. The properties allows to date, time, comments, trackbacks properties along with creating excerpts for your blog post, assignment of keywords and support for providing update ping urls.


Content Management

I've tried a few Windows-based blog software editors and BlogJet is at the front of the pack. While there are some interface enhancements I would like to see, BlogJet simply works and works very well. While I haven't configured BlogJet work with every blog software platform and version it supports, I've used BlogJet to publish to Blogger.com, Squarespace, WordPress, Blogware/BlogHarbor, and TypePad. It worked flawlessly with all of them.

From the BlogJet WYSIWYG interface you have toolbar buttons for basic format functions such as bold italics and underline. You also have buttons for font color, hyperlinks, bullets and smilies. BlogJet provides button for your major tasks as well. You have easy to identify buttons on your toolbar for creating a new post, viewing recent posts, post & publish and change accounts.

Additional formatting functions are available from a dropdown menu. BlogJet supports posting to categories and remotely managing your blog posts. BlogJet can pull up your most recent posts allowing you to edit them and publish the updates or samply save them as a file to your hard drive. You can also remotely delete your blog posts.

Honorable mentions include image uploading, file attachments, voice attachments, music detection and statistics on your content (number of words, etc.).


Form, Features & Functions

BlogJet is a true to form windows-based document editor for blogging. This is one the best blog software editors available because it makes writing and publishing to multiple blogs "plain as day" easy. Once you have multiple blog accounts setup in BlogJet, your login screen will present with the account you last used by default. You have an account drop down box that lists all of the configured blog accounts for BlogJet. You simply select the account you want to use and login. You can also set your account to auto login on start.

Logging out of an account is as easy and pushing a button from the BlogJect toolbar that will take you back to the login dialogue box so that you can select a different account.

I want to spotlight the Properties view for a moment since this is a major addition in BlogJet 1.2 Beta this isn't available in version 1.1.x.

The date and time properties worked very well but I was really disappointed that posting to the future didn't schedule my post. BlogJet simply published the my blog entry with the future date and time attached to it which of course makes for a somewhat confusing public post. I though perhaps setting a future date and time and using the publish as draft option would schedule the post but this did not work either. BlogJet again published the article with the future date and time attached to it. I suppose it was too good to be true. It may be a result of the API as I only tested this specifically with TypePad since TypePad supports posting to the future to schedule blog content publishing. But I'm not really sure.

Comments and TrackBack properties give you to ability to allow or disallow these features on a per blog entry basis and they work very well. Excerpts is implemented with a nice touch. After you have created written your content, you click little button that will generate the excerpt from your post automatically. No cut and pasting. Lastly, you can add keywords and urls to ping. It is unclear weather the ping properties actually work. Sometimes when you ping Weblogs with and update you can go to the website and do a FIND in your browser and find you blog on the update list. While this is rather crude way to quickly check a successful ping update it has worked for me more often than not. When using the ping tool in BlogJet I wasn't able to verify and actual ping update. I cannot use this as a hard rule since there have been times I done ping updates and wasn't able to locate my blog in the update list.

Last Words...

I love BlogJet and highly recommend it. If you know how to log into your blog software host or blog site server already then setting up BlogJet is a breeze and using the tool will allow you to blog much more conveniently whether you are blogging for fun or for profit.

What I would like to see is the option to post as draft represented as a toolbar button instead of just being available from a drop down menu. Perhaps this was done to avoid confusion with the Post & Publish option. I'm not sure but I think there should be a way to distinguish them enough visually as buttons so as not to confuse most people. A button for font size might be useful also as this is available from a drop down menu and not readily apparent. But I might be nitpicking here. :)

The automatic generation of excerpts could benefit from a global setting that allows you set the number of characters for excerpts/summaries of articles. It would be great to have a visual cue when posting that lets you know your ping urls are getting pinged and it would also be great to have a global setting that allows you save ping urls thus avoiding the need to keep copy and pasting them each time. If don't use a tool like ShortKeys it may be worth trouble. I personally like to ping as many update services as reasonably possible.

The additional toolbar buttons are the "interface enhancements" I referenced earlier. I just think they would be naturally fitting additions to the current selection of buttons. My "would like to see" list is just that. This product is already fantastic and worthy of your evaluation.

BlogJet integrates excellently with FeedDemon and RSS Bandit. BlogJet also has an optional "BlogJet This!" applet for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. When ever you surf to a website or blog that you want to blog about, you click the "BlogJet This!" button in your respective browser and BlogJet will launch and grab the URL reference. From there you just blog away.


Additional Notes:

BlogJet is free to try for 30 days and cost only $19.95 to buy. You can go here to the BlogJet Download page.


Interesting facts from BlogJet Blog:

*Plug in for RSS Bandit RSS news reader.
*BlogJet Works with MS Office 2003 Voice Recognition
*For users of Active Words here it appears that you easily switch between different account within BlogJet. More Info Here.
*The BlogJet Wiki