Fast, Powerful Blogging With Mac OSX

I’ve been asked what tools I use to blog with, as blogging is a somewhat inexact science and as such there are many tips and tricks to make it easier and faster. So here I’m going to share my workflow and applications with you, in the hopes that you find it useful.

My main computer is a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM. I don’t have nor need a desktop computer anymore. I run Mac OSX 10.4.8.

STEP ONE: DRINK FROM THE INTERNET FIREHOSE

Gone are the days when I would go to a dozen sites every few hours to get the latest news. These days, RSS readers are all the rage, and if you don’t use one now, you’re missing out. For serious blogging, there is no other option to cover the tremendous amount of news from hundreds of sites. Once you get it into your workflow, there is no going back.

I use Google Reader, which I love, and which I found via a discussion over at Scoble’s place. For the Mac, there are two other awesome options: Newsfire and NetNewsWire, which are both beautiful, elegant, well-designed applications. Google Reader is, as you might guess, a web app, so once you set your feeds up, you’re done. It’s cross-platform and can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Newsfire and NetNewsWire, on the other hand, are client-side Mac applications, and while they are utterly gorgeous and easy to use, I prefer the universal and open nature of Google Reader.

So, Google Reader for the win.

STEP TWO: COMPOSE YOUR POST

Once you’ve discovered what you want to write about, you have to compose your blog post somewhere. As I see it, there are two ways to do this.

The first is to use whatever web-based post creation software your blog engine has. For the time being, I’m at WordPress.com, and obviously WordPress has its own way to compose and edit posts in a rich, full-featured web client. When I was with Blogger Beta, it had the same. TypePad and Moveable Type have their versions. All of these clients are easy, rich and allow you to control just about every option you want — categories, images, typeface options, trackback settings — in gorgeous Web 2.0 style.

However, as nice as WordPress is with FireFox 2, I still use ecto when I have a chance, which is an excellent Mac OSX (and Windows) blog composition and management client. It’s sexy, easy to use, and more intuitive than a pure web interface. It allows you to keep a copy of your writing on your local HD in case your blog control panel ever eats one of your posts, compose entries offline, use attachments and more easily create links and images.

Very little is lacking with WordPress’ web control panel, yet I still prefer ecto, even though it costs $17.95. That’s saying something.

STEP TWO POINT FIVE: RESIZE YOUR IMAGES

Graphics for the web need special attention to how large they are, for both on-screen dimensions and filesize itself. Often, you’ll need to resize images and/or convert formats quickly and easily, and there’s no need to launch a full-on image editor to do this.

There are two very strong options on OSX to do this: Image Shackle, which is an OSX Dashboard widget, and Image Tricks, which is a small OSX app that allows easy graphic file manipulation and effects using OSX Tiger’s CoreImage filters. Image Shackle is a bit quicker and easier, while Image Tricks is richer and more flexible. I call it a draw — try both and choose the one that works best for you.

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STEP THREE: ANNOUNCE YOURSELF

Once your new post is published, you want to get the word out so that the blogosphere knows it exists.

WordPress.com offers its own service that pings Technorati and a few other sites that track blog activity, but I use Pingoat to notify many, many sites that track blog updates. Once Pingoat notifies these services that your blog has been updated, they eventually crawl and re-index your corner of the world, publishing your blog’s new content. It’s easy, free, and mostly reliable. (I say mostly because sometimes Pingoat fails to make a connection with Technorati and Icerocket in particular, which isn’t too serious a problem, as WordPress notifies Technorati too).

Finally, I also like to share my new post URLs with del.icio.us for the sake of social bookmark sharing, and I do this with the Firefox del.icio.us extension. Other Mac users like to use Pukka, which I’ve tried and like very much, but I don’t see a reason to use a stand-alone app when a browser extension works just as well and doesn’t interrupt my workflow as much. Nonetheless, give Pukka a try if you’re so inclined — it has a near-religious following, can handle more than one del.icio.us account, and offers better tag and AppleScript support.

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So that’s my workflow, and it seems to work very well. If you blog yourself and use OSX, how do you do it?

Technorati Tags: Apple & OSX, Blogging, WordPress.com