Blog Posting Software

Posted on March 24, 2008
Filed Under Tech |

I’m trying to decide on blog posting software. Since I’m on a Mac that means Mars Edit or Ecto.

I’ve been using Mars Edit the past week or two and have really liked it. Uploading images is a snap. It’s minimalist and fast. The downside is that it doesn’t have a WYSIWYG editor. Not a big deal for me. However I plan to put up a family blog and let my wife maintain it. She’s not a techie. So having to explain HTML tags to do anything remotely complex isn’t that exciting. And the WordPress WYSIWYG editor in its online interface doesn’t work right with Safari.

I just started my evaluation of Ecto. Some things I like better. The media importer isn’t as nice, from what I can tell. It does have an Amazon helper if I ever get off my behind and become an associate. (Not that anyone is apt to buy the kind of suggestions I’d make) It also tends to be a bit buggy.

Anyway, I know a lot of you out there use these programs. What are your thoughts?

Comments

10 Responses to “Blog Posting Software”

I started w/ ecto but it’s been in version 3 beta limbo for a long time now with little development.

I now use Mars Edit and I like it. It’s updated fairly frequently and works well. The author has discussed WYSIWYG editing and said that its in the pipeline.

I write in Google docs and then copy and paste into WordPress. My wife uses Vox for the family blog (which is very cool because of the easy privacy tools).

But I’m thinking of setting up Flock to post to AMV.

The bugs in Ecto along with its very limited media uploader have turned me off against it. I like, however, the iPhoto integration.

I agree about ecto. It’s a shame. Hopefully the developer will turn his focus back onto it eventually.

There is a way to publish directly to your blog from Google Docs that I need to try. The only problem is I don’t think you can categorize or tag your posts but you can do it later. It looks to be a great way to do serious editing on longer posts.

It may be a nice alternative when you’re away from your primary computer.

http://documents.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37571&topic=8629

I use MarsEdit. I have no complaints.

Regarding the techniness of HTML, you can have MarsEdit use Markup, or one of the other easier formats.

I use ScribeFire plugin for Firefox. It has pretty good wysiwyg editor, image uploader integrated in the ‘insert image’ option of the wysiwyg, Firefox provides the spellcheck, and has all standard possibilities (categories, tags, saving notes for later, editing published posts, etc..). However I’m not fully happy with it, especially in the last versions there is some silly bug where they ask you if you want to save the documents changes, even you didn’t changed anything, or even the document is empty. So, as it is now, I wouldn’t recommend it because of this bug.

Until I visited your site I didn’t know there were such platforms. This is wicked cool information! Thanks! And keep us updated about your blogging experience. I think I might try Ecto.

I finally decided to buy MarsEdit when it’s trial period ran out. I really, really came to dislike Ecto after a while. That despite having some very nice features. (The iPhoto integration is fantastic and something casual bloggers with family blogs would love)

Hopefully the new version of MarsEdit will be out soon.

Yeah, Ecto isn’t so good. On MarsEdit are you able to insert a “more” indicator so that only a few lines show up on your blog’s homepage? I wasn’t able to find one on Ecto.

Thanks!

The better way in MarsEdit is to click on the “Body” tab to enter the header and then the “Extended” tab to enter the rest. That’s the same as using the more tag but it adds it automatically.

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