Probably the most awaited Windows desktop app for bloggers, WordPress for Windows PC, is now available. WordPress.com is a popular platform to make a website or a blog. Whether you want to work on tech niche or fashion niche or anything else. You can easily opt for WordPress CMS, which is the best and very easy-to-use CMS.

Although, the WordPress app has been available for mobile platforms, yet, the desktop editions were still under development. However, now you can use WordPress for Windows PC without any special system requirements.

Although this app is named WordPress for Windows, you cannot use a self-hosted WordPress blog with this app. It only supports wordpress.com blogs. Therefore, if you have wordpress.com blog, you can utilize this app on your Windows machine. This is a drawback of this app. At the same time, this is a great update for wordpress.com users. Nevertheless, if you are using the Jetpack plugin, you can use this app partially because Jetpack has an option that lets users use their self-hosted WordPress blog and wordpress.com site from wordpress.com dashboard. Anyway, that is a different thing in this case.

UI of WordPress for Windows

The user interface of WordPress app for Windows is very neat and clean. Although it comes with a few couple of options, all of them are well organized. It has the traditional blue and white color combination. The overall design of WordPress app is pretty good and confusing.

WordPress desktop app for Windows PC

As mentioned before, there is no such strict system requirement – at least, nothing is mentioned on the official website. Therefore, it is possible to install this app on almost all the latest Windows versions including Windows 10. First, install the WordPress desktop app on your Windows PC to get started. After opening it, you will get a window like this,

Here you can enter your wordpress.com site credential. If you have such a site, you can enter the login details. Otherwise, if you want to create a wordpress.com website, you can create that by clicking on Create account button. This is very easy and not much time-consuming.

After logging in, the following window will appear:

It will show you your followed websites or the Reader window where you can read different posts by different wordpress.com blog owners.

WordPress for Windows has almost all the options that generally users get on web version. Therefore, let’s check out all the options of WordPress app for Windows.

Profile Management

This is where you should get started because the security of your blog and professional profile both are required. You can setup both of them from the Profile Management section of this app. On the other hand, this is very easy to open the profile settings. Just click on your profile picture from the main navigation. Here you can do the following things.

My Profile:

Upload/change profile picture
Enter/change your name
Enter/change display name – this is what other people will see in the author bio
Edit author bio
Add additional site link

Account Settings:

Change username
Edit email address
Primary site selection – if you have multiple sites in one account, you can change the primary site. If you set Site A as primary site, you will get all the things related to that whenever you will sign in
Change web address of your site
Change interface language
Enable/disable Fun Mode

Security:

Change password
Enable/disable two-step authentication – this is recommended for any account including this one
Manage connected app – you can mainly find WordPress.com Desktop app in the list. Don’t disconnect this app. Otherwise, you will have to log in again

Notifications:

Manage notifications for comment, update and reader subscriptions.

Now, if you want to customize your site with beautiful free themes, you may need to check out these steps.

You know that WordPress allows users to change the default theme anytime. To change the theme of your wordpress.com website using WordPress app for Windows, just head over to the Next Steps button under Profile management section. Although, there are other methods to change theme, but this is quicker. After clicking on the Next Steps button, you can find another option called Select a Theme.

Here, you can find a lot of free and paid themes. You can filter that using a button that looks like this,

After that, choose a theme and activate that. To activate any theme, click on the three dotted button and select activate. You can also check the preview from the same menu.

After enabling a theme, if you want to customize that, just hit the Customize button that is positioned on the same page.

If you are getting any problems while loading the customizer, don’t panic. You are not alone. Many other users are getting the same problem with this app.

However, if you can open the theme customizer, you can add various widgets and do other stuff from the same window.

Set up Menu

Menu bar or navigation bar is an important element of any webpage that helps users to find out different things faster. For example, you are writing on Windows OS and you have added some categories in the post. Or you have added some pages like About Us, Contact etc. Now, if you want to add a menu bar to your website, you need to follow this guide.

On the left-hand side, you can find an option called Menus. Just, click on this. Now, depending on the theme, you can find Primary menu, Secondary menu, footer menu etc. Now, click on Default Menu button and create a new menu bar with your desired name.

Therefore, add items (page, category, custom link) and save the menu. Following that, select a menu location by clicking on the menu location button. It will be set automatically. You do not have to do anything else.

Write first post

Now, as everything is almost ready, it’s time to write your first post or write another post. To write a post, you can find an Add button next to the Blog Posts options.

Click on that to write your posts. Here you can find a window like this,

You can add title, post body, category, tag, featured image, post format, slug, excerpt, location and many more. This is also possible to allow or block comments, pingbacks and trackbacks from the same window.

Like a regular writing panel, you can switch to HTML from Visual interface. If you want to schedule any post, just click on the calendar button that is placed next to the Publish button. Therefore, you can set a time and date.

The most important part of any website is statistics. You can record your visitor statistics using in-built or third-party services like Google Analytics, StatCounter etc. Here you can find the in-built tracking system and the big thing is you do not have to include any code to start tracking. Just head over to the Stats tab to check your visitor statistics.

How to quit WordPress app in Windows

It works something like the desktop version of the Skype app. That means, if you sign out and click on the close button of the WordPress app window, it will be minimized as it shows notifications. Therefore, if you want to quit this app, click on File and select Quit.

Drawbacks in WordPress for Windows

Although Automattic has launched the WordPress app for Windows to make things easier, it comes with some tiny flaws. Here are some of them,

Theme customizer doesn’t work properly. Many users have got problems while customizing the theme.
Scrolling is not so smooth. Sometimes, you can get the scrolling but the scroll bar remains in the same position.
You cannot add more people to your blog from this app. You will have to open the web version to get things done.
Last but not the least, this app is not compatible with self-hosted WordPress blog.

Considering all the things, this is quite good for WordPress.com users since they always have to use the web interface to run their blog. After Windows Live Writer, the official app will make their work faster for sure.

If you like, you can download WordPress for Windows from wordpress.com.