Since the native WP posting editor has begun to suck so horribly, and my reliable third-party standby for years, Ecto, doesn’t work at all with the new/old iMac’s decrepit operating system, I’ve been casting desperately about for months now in search of another blog-posting alternative that will run on this infernal machine. This casting about led me to download MarsEdit for a test run to see how it might suit.
I’m thrilled to find that it does indeed support custom macros, which is one of the primary things I loved about Ecto and have been missing most. Unfortunately, after a 14 day trial run I’m required to buy the damned software at a hefty 60 bucks, which after having shelled out 39.99 for Ecto already sticks in my craw pretty badly. If I understand things correctly, I can still use ME to write posts and store them locally, I just can’t actually upload ’em to the ol’ websty without purchasing a license first.
We’ll see what transpires on all that hoo-ha, I reckon, but for the moment I gotta say I’m thoroughly loving MarsEdit. In addition to downloading all my posts, categories, and pages from WP on CF’s server, it also grabbed all the media files I’ve embedded in past posts as well, something Ecto didn’t do. That means I’ll have a complete archive of everything but the actual database files ready to hand in case those Russian hackers get frisky and make another run at Ye Humble Blogge again.
Lots of new-to-me features with this ME thing too, some of which look likely to be right handy. Maybe I need to consider holding another fundraiser hereabouts when my 14-day trial period is about to expire…
Update! Aw yeah, this thing rocks for sure. SOOOO much better than that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned WP posting editor. Need to find some kind of YT embed next, see how that goes. Stand by…
KNOCKED OUT update! Man oh MAN, is this MarsEdit software amazing! Had I known about it before tonight, I woulda switched off from Ecto years ago.
See, in both the Ecto and ME main window, the main window shows a list of previous posts up top, below which is a preview of whatever post you click on and highlight. Well sir, I just learned that, with ME, you can download your blog’s theme template to be used for the preview. With Ecto, you could customize your preview template, but it was a right pain in the arse to do, so I never did bother with it.
This handy-dandy feature could well mitigate the need for me to hold off doing all the proofreading and editing until after the post has gone live, which is a good thing. Screen grab:
Brilliant, no? Turns out, MarsEdit’s built-in Upload Utility allows you to resize the image, reformat it, &c before you even upload it, bypassing the need to further fool around as is required by the infernal WP editor. Yeah, it’s definitely looking more and more as if I need to come up with the sixty simoleons for this little gem.
1
2
- Entries
If you can send me your location and the name on your drivers licence, I can send you money by Western Union. If it works for Lviv, Ukraine, it should work for the US… my email is hhluce@yahoo.com
Mighty kind of you, hh. Let me dig out my DL and see about that; I’ll shoot ya an email for sure. Thanks!
I’ll chip in as well. I’ll use the gab pay. Maybe tonight and if not, tomorrow for sure.
OK, you’re 2/3’s the way there as I had some $$ left in the gab account. I need to transfer some more into my account and then I’ll send a bit more.