I am testing my blogging software in a different mode. That is what this post is all about, nothing exciting, sorry.
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Testing concluded and working mostly well.
If anyone is curious, a while back I did a series of posts about blogging on MacOS and the search for a Windows Live Writer alternative. Ultimately I choose to go with MarsEdit.
Over time I’ve really enjoyed working with MarsEdit, much more so than WLW actually, but I still do a lot of work on Windows and MarsEdit has a pair of pretty heavy downsides. I use BlogEngine for this sites blog, and it supports blog API seems to be catered towards WLW, it used the Metablog standard, but with extensions. Those extensions are to support Pages and Tags, two things I used heavily.
This means if I published using MarsEdit, no TAG support. Even worse, if I edited an existing post, it removed the tags. This was to say the least a bit of a bummer. I also can’t create Pages, which are basically just posts that are outside the timeline of the blog. I use these for table of contents posts, like the index page for almost any Tutorial post I write.
So I fired off a support/feature request to Red Sweater. Impressively I go a response, not a form letter, an actual response with suggestions to try setting my blog type to WordPress and trying again. It somewhat worked, but isn’t quite perfect.
I am hoping to get there eventually, but in the meanwhile, a gigantic tip of my hat to Red Sweater, that is exceptional support! I certainly wouldn’t expect the same from Microsoft, and they are a company I hold in incredibly high regard when it comes to customer service.
So, there you go. If you are looking for a Mac based blogging software, give MarsEdit a shot. If you are running MarsEdit with BlogEngine and run into issues, try setting your blog type to WordPress.
That is all.