This tutorial was written while offline and without any kind of browser open. That’s right. You can blog right from your gnome-based desktop with the greatest of ease!
Tutorial for the day: Installing and blogging with Drivel.
To install Drivel you can use the basic methods we’re familiar with. Via the command line or from “Applications” > “Add / Remove” > search:Drivel. (command line “sudo aptitude install drivel”
You can then access Drivel from your Applications menu inside the Internet section.
Now once you have it installed it is pretty straight forward and easy to use. The only part that might be tricky is giving it access to the right file to verify your account with your blog. For WordPress (which is the only one I’ll outline since it is what everyone uses anymore) you’ll need these three things:
- username
- password
- Select “Moveable Type” and then give the path to: http://myblogaddress.com/xmlrpc.php
At that point you can login and start blogging away! Here is a quick rundown of some of the features of Drivel:
- Category Selection
- Editing previous posts
- Image Linking
Take it for a test drive and see what you think. Blogging just got easier!
drivel does not support SSL encryption yet. This means that all of the traffic between it and your blog’s web server is visible to the world, including the authentication (i.e. your username and password(.
Hopefully, they’ll fix that soon, but it’s been over a year (I think) since I first saw drivel and it’s still not supporting SSL.
thanks for the hint to point to the exact xml_rpc URL, as I use s9y and this what makes drivel finally work for me.
What I missed, is the benefit of drivel, as I loose the central repository of postings. Everything is saved local with drivel.
What are the real benefits of using drivel?
Jean – I don’t think Drivel is one of the best options, but it is an option. Others that I like (not linux-specific) are Performancing for Firefox or Blog via Flock
When blogging, I like to set categories _and_ tags to my entries. No can do with Drivel or _any_ offline blog editor I know. Hints welcome! 🙂
topyli – I’ve yet to find *any* blog platform that offers all of the features I would like whether online or off. I usually bounce between Flock (and its built-in Blog feature) or Performancing for Firefox.. Drivel is another option (hence the post) but isn’t my favorite.
My problem with Drivel is that I am behind a proxy (not a transparent one) and it does not allow me to specify my proxy details. So I cannot connect to blogspot.