Chrysanth WebStory

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on December 20, 2011

Blogging hasn't become the world's second-favorite indoor activity, yet. But with so many free blogging resources available, it seems to be only a matter of time. However, time is a scarce commodity when it comes to keeping up with your blogs. Chrysanth WebStory is a free tool that can help you manage, edit, and back up your blogs and image accounts. It comes with a free online account for posting to your blogs and other sites from your PC or smartphone or other mobile device. WebStory is compatible with all major blog platforms, including Blogspot, WordPress, and LiveJournal, as well as microblogs like Twitter, Web albums like Picasa and Flickr, and other image-sharing and social-networking sites.

Part of installing and setting up WebStory involves signing up for the free account, but it's easy and takes little time. You can protect your database with a password or enable free access. The user interface resembles Office's ribbon-based layout, with a home-pagelike File tab and additional tabs labeled My Blog and My Microblog, with an additional My Album option. The setup wizard recommends taking its brief tutorial, which does a fine job of getting new users started. You don't need to have an existing blog to use WebStory; a wizard makes it easy to create a new one using the Self.my service. We could also register with any of the blogging sites WebStory supports, and easily set up a blog, microblog, or blog group from each tab's navigation pane. Once we'd added our blogs and other sites, we could select them from a drop-down list. Selected blogs show Post, Page, and Task counts. Several options are important, such as setting the Default File Upload Storage Account, external tagging and pinging services, database path, plug-ins, and other access features, as well as spell-checking, editing, and program behavior.

We found it very easy to set up a free blog using WebStory's resources or register for a variety of other blogs directly from its support page. We didn't see our preferred blog site in WebStory's list of supported sites, even though it's one of the larger free blog providers. But WebStory supports most blog sites that offer the standard remote-publishing interface, so if you don't see yours, check its documentation of FAQs.