Interview with BlogJet Developer Dmitry Chestnykh

It’s no secret that I love blogging software BlogJet – I think it’s the best program out there for Windows. I had a chance to talk with the developer of BlogJet, Dmitry Chestnykh, and you can read the email interview below. Definitely check out BlogJet!

Tell us a little bit about your company and the products you offer.

I'm currently a one-man shop. I released my first product, DiFolders, in 2002. The next step was Active Cleaner. Though, these programs were not as successful as BlogJet. I live in Moscow, Russia - the place where most crackers, hackers, phishers, Russian mafia and other bad guys come from :) And I am (you are the first to know this!) 22.

BlogJet is a great blogging software program. What made you decide to create this program? What features did you want to give to the end user?

I'm blogging since... hmm... 2000 or 2001 and never liked web interface. My first blog was on DeadJournal (which was based on LiveJournal source) and they had a simple client for posting from desktop. I liked it, but I wanted more. Then I found a few freeware tools, which offered basically the same features, but were compatible with other blog services (such as Blogger, Movable Type). I never used them, though -- they had ugly interface, and I had to write HTML code. Then I thought that I wanted to write my posts using WYSIWYG editor -- something like Microsoft Word. I wanted to easily include pictures in my posts without having to upload them to server. Finally, I came to conclusion that it must be me who will write this application :)

Since your first offering of BlogJet, how have you seen the blogging world grow? Were you surprised by the growth of blogs?

Nothing strange. I always thought that I'll be much like Bill Gates who found the nice train to jump in that will take him to billions :)

Seriously, yes, I was really surprised. When I released BlogJet in May 2004, there were reports about 2 million blogs worldwide. Today only MSN Spaces has 10 million bloggers. And I'm very happy to help a fraction of these users with managing their blogs.

BlogJet supports most if not all major weblog services such as Blogger. Was it a challenge to get your program to work with so many different services? What service do you think is most popular?

We have three basic standards today - Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and Movable Type API (which is build on top of MetaWeblog). And you know what -- they are not really standards! Virtually every single blog software developer implemented API in her own way. And I have to tweak code for each service. The only service that required no tricks was Blogware (thanks to their developers).

Most popular service... really, I don't know. I see how WordPress grows. I see how many business bloggers move to TypePad... Well, since we have all popular services in BlogJet, our users just don't care :)

You also have a blog for BlogJet at http://blogjet.blogware.com/. How do you use your blog to make your software better?

It helps to spread a word about BlogJet. You know, if you make something that you want to be mentioned in blogosphere, you must have a blog.

Also, in my blog I make announces of new releases and new features, and read carefully every single comment -- this helps a lot in finding out what my users need.

What type of features are you looking to add in the future?

When I released 1.0, I made a lot of promises, but then I had an illness and spend two months in hospital. That took me three extra months to keep my promises and implement all those features. So now I have a bias against announcing something that has not been implemented yet. (Besically I follow Joel Spolsky's advice -"Mouth Wide Shut" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/MouthWideShut.html).

Anyway, I want to make it easier to create accounts, some posts caching and better "Edit Last Posts" window, more slick GUI, better spell checking, better handling of drafts, Technorati tags, etc. Oops, I just made a lot of promises :)