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Feb
6
(2005)
Trying out MarsEdit (again)
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: weblog.
I’d played around with MarsEdit back when it first came out. I liked it, but couldn’t justify using a client application when the Wordpress posting interface works very well. I see that Josh is trying MarsEdit so I thought I’d give it another go.
It does provide a handy way to manage multiple weblogs, and I have it configured so I can easily post to the PachyBlog as well.
UPDATE: It looks like WordPress 1.5 has fixed the issues with the XMLRPC interface, since MarsEdit is able to communicate with my weblog just fine, without requiring the xmlrpc hack I had to use before. I also just posted to the PachyBlog - something I hadn’t done since September (oops). MarsEdit just makes it so easy (don’t have to remember passwords - the KeyChain remembers all…)
UPDATE: Looks like the update post function is a bit borked. It didn’t want to update at all… I ended up deleting and recreating this post to update it. That won’t do… It would also be handy if MarsEdit understood hierarchical categories like WordPress does, rather than providing a flattened list of keywords (wait - that’s a folksonomy 
- see - hierarchies DO have their place…)
UPDATE: Hmm… Updates seem to kick the post into “Draft” status… Still on the blog, but invisible… I’ve filed a bug with Ranchero. but it looks like it got deleted or lost almost immediately. Doh. I’ve also filed a bug in the WordPress Mantis database just in case it’s something funky in their xml-rpc implementation.
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13 Responses to “Trying out MarsEdit (again)”
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I’ve been using MarsEdit with WordPress 1.2 for a month or two. I had some initial issues with MarsEdit failing to refresh from my blog but that turned out to be caused by OS X Server’s performance cache being on for one of the other sites on the box.
The only other issue I’ve experienced is MarsEdit occasionally touching the date on an entry after an update when I didn’t want it to. Overall though, I’ve been very pleased. For support I suggest you join the mailing list, you’ll find Brent is very active on it.
The first thing I do with a MacOSX Server is turn off the performance caching. It just causes more problems than it’s worth, and any box I’ve run had more than enough horsepower to run without caching enabled.
I will check out the mailing list when I get a chance - I need more mail in my inbox
Hi D’Arcy,
It appears to be a bug in WordPress. A new bug, alas — I just started hearing about it with WordPress 1.5. (MarsEdit is able to edit entries with other weblog systems just fine.)
I’ll install the latest WordPress and see if I can figure out a workaround, or at least report a bug to the WordPress folks.
Note to David: the date-touching bug was also a WordPress bug, though I think it has been fixed in recent WordPress builds.
Thanks for the info, Brent! It’s filed as a bug with the Wordpress developers, so here’s hoping it gets squashed before you have to worry about a workaround
Weird - updating an entry appears to have worked for Matt (one of the WordPress developers). It’s still failing for me with MarsEdit and Ecto.
I took a quick look at the WordPress code, and my guess is that it has something to do with categories. So it may not be that it always fails, but that it fails in certain circumstances. (Say, if you specify categories, or don’t specify categories, or something.) Do WordPress sites have the concept of a default category? That could be something to look at too.
Hmmm… Just tried creating a new entry with no categories (WP forced it into “general”). If I remove it from any categories and try to save the edit, it still fails. Also fails if I leave it in “General”.
I just took a closer look at the XML-RPC call, and it looks like the fourth parameter (which maps to the “publish”) is set to boolean 0. Not sure if that is used or not, or if it would kick the post into draft mode.
Yes, that’s true, because MarsEdit treats WordPress as a Movable-Type/TypePad/etc. system. So when it sends an edited post to the weblog, it works like this:
XML-RPC call #1: Send the post with the publish flag set to 0.
XML-RPC call #2: Set the categories for the post.
XML-RPC call #3: Send the post again, this time with publish flag set to 1.
The reason for this is that Movable Type would render the page after call #1 — but with the wrong category and hence at the wrong location. So we set it to not publish on call #1, then set it to publish on call #3.
Since WordPress implements the Movable Type APIs, we treat it as Movable-Type-compatible. And for most builds of WordPress this has worked.
But what’s happening here is that call #1 is generating an error — but the post actually does go through, only it’s set to not publish. Since it generates an error, calls 2 and 3 are not made.
Brent, thanks for the clarification. That totally makes sense. Now to roll up my sleeves and see if I can figure out what is calling WordPress’ wp_update_post() method is failing when called by mw_editpost() in xmlrpc.php…
You might check out ECTO too.
I just tested it on our site and it seems to work fairly well.
http://ecto.kung-foo.tv
Do you know of any other blog editors for OS X?
Matt, thanks for the suggestion. I actually tried Ecto over the weekend, and it’s having the same issue on WordPress 1.5 for me… I’m going to try with an even fresher build of WordPress (I last tried the Feb. 13 build - that IS a day old now…)
I had been using Ecto’s predecessor Kung-Log back when I was using MovableType to host my weblog. Worked great.
Is it too late to add a note to this because I’m now having xmlrpc errors posting to WP 1.5 with BlogJet (www.blogjet.com) and it also seems to involve categories.
Symptoms: the first two posts work fine, then the remainder all generate an xmlrpc error but post OK, except that the categories are all changed back to General (the default?). Is there a patch or workaround anywhere?