MarsEdit: blog post editor
I own a number of websites. Until a few months ago I would create them using Dream Weaver – or I would have them created for me using Dream Weaver, then update the content myself using DM. Not any more.
My current sites, like this one, iPad Enthusiast, Triumph Over Challenges (where I help people overcome the adversity in their lives), and Al Ain Enthusiast (for people who live in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, where I now live), were all created using WordPress, a database-driven website structure.
I’m not the only one to discover WordPress: according to wikipedia there are more than 200 million sites built using it. The great thing about WordPress is that I can set up the bare bones of a site with effectively one click in a panel at my webhosting company, BlueHost. All I need to do then is get the design of the site looking good: I do this by assigning a Theme. (This is beyond the scope of this post.) So what about filling the site with content? Well, I can do that via what is called the Dashboard, visiting it using my Safari browser, and adding pages or blog entries. But the best way to add content is using an offline editor. And the only one of any note that I’ve come across is MarsEdit.
Here’s what it looks like to use…
Notice a list of sites I’m working on on the left hand side.
Two thirds of the way down on that side you’ll see “Apple Mac Enthu” and below that “Posts” and “Pages”. Posts are for the blog posts, and Pages are the ‘static’ pages like the About Me page, Sitemap page, Links page, and so on.
I can click on New Post, enter some text, and click on the Media button. In one folder on my Mac I have some of the covers for my ebooks. You can see here that I’ve selected the cover for Dissolve Your Mental Shackles which is 423 pixels wide. I can adjust this to, say, 250 pixels wide, align it to the right, then click the Insert button….
…and then when I lick the ‘Send To Blog’ button, MarsEdit will upload a smaller version of this image to my website.
MarsEdit enables me to add all the bolds, underlines, italics, etc as I would in Pages or any word processor, before clicking on the ‘Send To Blog’ button. Within seconds I have new content live on my site.
I have come across a few minor bugs/inconsistencies/annoyances in this program, but MarsEdit’s creator, Daniel Jalkut, is a delight to communicate with. This is a great piece of software. I highly recommend it. I don’t think there’s any better choice for creating and updating web content for WordPress sites.
Download a demo version here.
Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.
