This morning I downloaded, installed and tried out a Windows desktop blogging program called BlogDesk. Once you install and open the program for the first time you’ll see the following screen:

STEP 1. Add your blog by choosing FILE->Manage Blogs.

STEP 2. Click “New” and then a separate window will open so you can type the name of your blog.

STEP 3. Enter in the URL for your blog without the http:// part. On the next screen you’ll need to verify the location to your xmlrpc.php script. In Wordpress default installs this is usually the root directory: yourdomain.com/xmlrpc.php, which BlogDesk will choose by default.

STEP 4. Choose what blogging platform you’re using. A couple of these I’ve never hear dof (blogg.de? Twoday.net?)

STEP 5. Enter in your USERNAME and PASSWORD for your blog platform
STEP 6. Get the categories from your blog by clicking the “Get Categories” button.

STEP 7. Test the upload image function. You should see the blogdesk image after pressing the image. If you don’t then you’ll need to configure for FTP.

STEP 8. If you see the following screen you’re all set to begin blogging and publishing through BlogDesk:

STEP 9. Add title and start writing as you normally would.

STEP 10. When you want to insert an image you can click the image icon in the toolbar or right click and choose Insert Image -> choose file OR Insert Image -> External Link (an image URL already on the web)

STEP 11. Choose the category you want to put the post in, whether or not you want to allow comments, pings or to be in draft or published immediately (”Publish after Upload” checked means it will be published immediately). For this test I unchecked this box so I could see how it looked from the Wordpress admin area first.

STEP 12. Before publishing you might want to save and/or spellecheck the post. To spellcheck use the right click menu. To save just click on the disk icon in the toolbar. To publish the post FILE->Publish Post or CTRL+F9 on the keyboard. BlogDesk will ask for confirmation and then upload the images.

Voila, you have published a post!

Troubleshooting
If you see an error message like this:

Then try it again. I saw that Cat from Techie Diva was having some problems getting this to work with Wordpress, so maybe this step-by-step with screenshots will help.

• How to reduce size of images in Photoshop
• How to create a Photoshop action for resizing images
• Tablet PC ink blogging application features needed
• Your head on an Easter Egg using Photoshop
• Wordpress and TypePad add ‘widgets’
• Free users get more features from blogger