MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

My blogging career started almost simultaneously with the purchase of my first Mac a year and a half ago and it’s been a great experience so far. Below are the applications that I use daily to administer my personal blogging empire.

All but two of these applications are freeware, but the two that aren’t, namely MarsEdit and CSSEdit, are worth every penny.

MarsEdit:

In my opinion, MarsEdit is the best desktop blogging client for the Mac. With powerful text editing, easy access to uploaded images and an awesome post preview window, MarsEdit has the potential to improve any blogger’s workflow. MarsEdit’s clean and fast user interface never gets in your way and lets you focus completely on your content. It’s changed the way that I interact with my blog.

Download MarsEdit. After a 30 day trial, it’s 29.95 US.

Seashore:

If you use images in your posts, then you need a quick way to resize, crop and add effects to them. Seashore is a free image editor and has lots of features that should satisfy the majority of users. An open source Cocoa based application, Seashore supports gradients, textures, anti-aliasing, layering, alpha channel editing and has multiple selection tools. If you want your images to look as good as your content reads, give Seashore a try.

Download Seashore. It’s freeware.

Cyberduck:

My favorite FTP client, Cyberduck makes it easy to connect to your server’s back end. Bookmark all your favorite locations and open text files in an external editor with a keystroke. It also comes with an uber-cute dashboard widget for quick uploads. Cyberduck grants you easy access to all of your blog’s theme files and offers you some power when uploading one file at a time via your blogging software doesn’t cut it.

Download Cyberduck. It’s freeware.

TextWrangler:

A free text editor from the makers of BBEdit, TextWrangler lets you edit your code base with ease. Find and replace snippets, open multiple documents in the same window and worry-free smart undos make TextWrangler my editor of choice. When you’re finished tweaking, upload to the server with one click. TextWrangler takes the hassle out of working with the governing code of your site, and though I use only a few of the extensive features packed into TextWrangler, I really appreciate how rock solid and wicked fast the application is.

Download TextWrangler. It’s freeware.

CSSEdit:

Most blogging software comes with some free site templates, but if you want your blog to have a unique look, then you’re going to have to do some CSS editing. CSSEdit lets you open your files directly from your FTP client and gives you a live preview of any modifications you make via a live preview window. Find and replace classes and values, search classes or the style sheet as a whole, choose values from well organized drop down lists, record editing milestones, validate and upload your mods to the server directly from the application. Non-CSS gurus will really appreciate CSSEdit’s helpful interface features, and power users will find lots to love, too.

Download CSSEdit. Unlimited trial but 29.95 Euros if you want to save edits.

Four Free Little Ones:

Jumpcut gives you multiple clipboards and has a nice interface. Great for copying quoted text from several articles or multiple URLs. Download Jumpcut.

Free Ruler, as the name implies, puts a ruler on your desktop that can measure pixels, centimeters, inches and picas. Really, really handy for aligning elements in posts or when tweaking your blog template. Download Free Ruler.

Ping is a drag and drop utility to knock a few kilobytes off of your png image files. This helps your site load a little faster for those on slow connections. Download Ping.

Think extends full-screen mode to pretty much any Mac application. If you want to be distraction free while you write, Think can make it happen. Download Think.

Bonus Application: NetNewsWire:

NetNewsWire is a free RSS reader that makes gathering, sorting and reblogging articles and news items super easy. Group your feeds by content, sort by any number of smart filters, save notable articles or text clippings for later use and send news items off to MarsEdit with one click. NetNewsWire’s tight integration with your Mac makes it the perfect companion for the news hungry blogger.

Download NetNewsWire. It’s freeware.

I am a big fan of Wordpress as a blogging platform, but all of these applications will work not matter what platform you use to send your thoughts up to the web. If I’ve left any of your favorites off the list or would change something around, let me know!