I’m a WordPress blogger who likes to write whenever I have a chance. I blog in the waiting room from my iPhone using BlogPress ($2.99). I blog at 30,000 feet using WordPress for iOS (free). But when it comes to blogging on the iPad I gotta tell ya, the guys over at Fomola nailed it with Blogsy ($2.99).
The iPad-only app is clean, intuitive, and packs some pretty unique tools that will make a mobile blogger salivate.
As Advertised
Drag & Drop Your Pictures
Drag & Drop your Flickr or Picasa pictures right into your blog post. Choose pictures from any album, set, or friends’ photos, or search across the respective sites, and drag ‘em into your post. As for your iPad photo library, you can now access and upload images right from Blogsy.
Drag & Drop Videos
Drag & Drop YouTube videos into your blog post. Find the video you want, drag it into your post, and then tap on the video to choose from an iFrame or the old YouTube embed code.
Drag & Drop from the Web
Drag & Drop from the the in-app browser. Search the web for images and links and drag them into your post. You can also use embed codes, copy text from other sites, or whatever else you might do in a browser.
Text Formatting
Do you want to bold or italicize text, make lists, set alignment, or use the more tag without ever having to write any HTML? In Blogsy it’s as easy as selecting the text and tapping on one of the buttons in the Formatting Toolbar.
Blog Platforms
Blogsy supports Blogger and both WordPress.com blogs and self-hosted WordPress blogs. There’s no limit to the number of accounts you can use.
My take
The Good
My biggest beef with WordPress for iOS is its lack of a WYSIWYG editor. This is where Blogsy shines. The app provides two ways to edit text. There’s a code view for easy writing and tagging. Just highlight the text and select the desired formatting option (bold, italic, strikethrough, heading, paragraph, align, quote, and links). On the flip slide (literally, you swipe to switch views) the design view gives a rich text view of your post. While you cannot edit in the design view, you can apply formatting to text, and add and edit links. One thing about the design view. It handles HTML tags kinda weird. Instead of a straight up tag, Blogsy uses a tag and a class. A bit odd since this isn’t the case in the code view.
Blog posts are bland without media? No worries, Blogsy gives you access to Flickr, Picasa, Google image search, and YouTube. And the whole drag-n-drop thing couldn’t be easier. Find an image, video, or link and just drag it into your post. (Update 5/25). Blogsy now lets you access the iPad’s media library to upload images to the WP Media library, Flickr, and Picasa. Nice!
Configuring your post’s properties is a breeze. Open your post, tap the edit cog, and enter the title, publish date, categories, tags, comments, status, visibility, and select a blog destination.
The Bad
Blogsy is not a universal app which means iPhone users need to rely on something else like BlogPress, Blog Writer, or WP (I use Notesy and Evernote to tap out posts on the quick). I understand it would be nearly impossible to give iPhone user the iPad experience, but I’d settle for a scaled back Blogsy.
The Ugly
It’s rare, but the app does crash. What’s worse, there’s no autosave so if it crashes you’re SOL. I’ve only lost part of two posts, but I’ve read plenty of horror stories of people using entire posts. To be fair, I’ve lost so many posts using WordPress for iOS that the app is nearly useless. Still, Blogsy needs a fix before crashing becomes a larger issue.
Final Verdict
Blogsy makes great use of the real estate and provides bloggers with nearly everything they need to get the job done. The app outshines WordPress for iOS and is much more intuitive than BlogPress and Blog Writer. My advice, if you use Blogger or WordPress, own an iPad, and have $3 to spare then you need to get Blogsy (iTunes | $2.99). ★★★★☆
I wrote this entire app in Blogsy with the exception of images I uploaded from my iPad to my media library. How about you? Do you use Blogsy? Share your experiences below or send me an e-mail at TiTy@y2kemo.com.
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