I have been using ecto (lowercase “e” on purpose) with my WordPress blog for about 6 months, and I love it. There are many excellent features to ecto that help ‘fill in the cracks’ of my WordPress admin as well as simply making my life as an online writer more productive. In fact, I love ecto so much I am finally writing a much needed review / how-to on ecto.
ecto is a desktop publisher. Meaning you write your posts from your computer without the need to be online. Then - just like an email application - you can publish your post once you’re connected to the internet.
Being able to write offline is a great feature for anyone with a laptop, that doesn’t always have internet connection. It was for this reason that I was initally drawn to download the trial version. Then, after my initial 21 day trial with ecto I happily coughed up the $17.95 to purchase it.
By the end of those three weeks, my primary exuse to purchase ecto wasn’t because of the ability to write posts offline. If you’re like me, even with a laptop I’m virtually always connected to the internet. What really hooked me on ecto was the ability to set it up for multiple blogs, and the image upload feature. The more I use it the more I realized how well it integrated with my blog. The time I saved in image re-sizing and uploading was worth much more than $18.
Setting Up Your Blog Account
After downloading and installing ecto, you have to set-up an account (a.k.a. your blog). It’s extremely easy to do this.
1) Click on the “Accounts” button with the four weebles huddled together.
2) Click ‘Add’.
3) Enter Your Weblog Address.
4) Let the Wizard Guide you through the setup.
5) For the “API” option, I have mine set as Meta Weblog. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Select the type of blog you are publishing to (TypePad, MovableType, Blogger).
You can set up as many accounts as you like. Just repeat the process, by adding a new weeble account.
Writing a Post
Something that makes ecto stand above some other desktop publishers is that it has both a WYSIWYG editor and a HTML editor. Most people will use the WYSIWYG editor. It’s very simple to write a post and publish it. Wa-la.
XHTML Editor: For the more advanced (read simple HTML tag savvy) users, you may want to write your posts using the XHTML editor.
Because I have the CSS in my site already pre-fabbed (h, img class, code…) I use the XHTML editor, because it publishes it exactly how I type it. If you don’t have CSS tags already set up then the XHTML Editor probably isn’t worth your time.
The dissadvantage to the WYSIWYG editor is that it converts any HTML tags. For example:
<h3>will get published as
<span style="font-size:13pt;">Shortcut Keys
This is a massive bonus with ecto. You can easily set up shortcut keystrokes. My favorite is the <a> tag. If you have text already copied on your clipboard (say from a URL in your browser) then you simply select the text in your post that you want to be the link at press CMD+SHIFT+U. Then your text becomes a link. Or you can press CMD+U to manually type in the link inside a dialog box that pops up.
You can set up all the shortcuts HTML tags you like. Just click the “Custom Tags” icon when writing a post, or go to Window, HTML Tags.
Drag and Drop Images
The biggest complaint with WordPress is it’s image upload and handling features. ecto makes it so easy I laugh every time.
To insert an image into a post you simply drag and drop it. Then, you double click the image to bring up a dialog box for all the properties relating to it. Within the dialog box you can adjust the image size (very handy for large images you want to fit inside your content container), adjust the image quality, change the file extension, and even create custom image tag code.
In my CSS file I have a few image class tags to make posting images much easier (bonus points to anyone who knows where I got the code from). My CSS looks like this:
/* images */
.content img.left {
padding: 3px;
margin: 0px 15px 0.5em 0;
float: left;
clear: left;
}
.contnet img.right {
padding: 3px;
margin: 0em 0 0.5em 15px;
float: right;
clear: right;
}
.content img.center {
display: block;
padding: 3px;
margin: 0 auto 1.5em auto;
border: 3px double #bbb;
float: none;
clear: both;
}
In my ecto image dialog box, I have three presets setup. One for each class. To set them up is extremely easy. Click on “Advanced” and type in your pre-written code. Mine says
<img class="center" src="^il" title="^t" />
With your custom tag entered, click on the Presets dropdown menu, and select Make Preset. Then type in the preset name. You can make as many presets as you like.
If you really want to get ecto to work seamlessly with your blog it will take a little bit of setup work. Wrighting your CSS tags and matching them with your ecto presets. But it’s worth it.
Other Features
ecto has the ability to intigrate with iTunes, iPhoto, and Amazon. You can insert photos from iPhoto, tracks from iTunes and items from Amazon. The only feature of these three that I have used is the iPhoto interface. It is pretty slow. I think it’s easier to simply open iPhoto, find the image you want and drag it into your post.
Saving Your Post
If you’re not ready to go live yet, then simply save your post and feel free to quit out. Your post will be saved as a draft inside ecto. To Publish it, double click the draft entry on the main ecto page and then click “Publish”.
Publishing Your Post
Something I do quite often is write a post and set it to publish at a later time. To adjust the time, click on the “Adjust Time” icon. Then save your post. Once you’re ready to publish it then, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Click Publish.
Get ecto
You can download a 21 Day Trial Version here.
loud said:
Have you tried Journler?
Posted on March 6, 2007 at 9:39 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Loud: I’m not very familiar with Journaler but it’s not a desktop blog publisher. It’s a note taker / organizer.
Posted on March 6, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Ronalfy said:
Shawn,
Thanks for the review. My biggest complain with desktop publishers is the way they handle images. From the screenshots, it looks like the program doesn’t try to add in their own style code (at least in the code view). I’ll consider giving it a try.
How good is it at handling drafts and tags?
Posted on March 6, 2007 at 9:54 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Ron: ecto does have it’s own image code, but you can write your own, like I mentioned.
It saves drafts just fine until you publish them. In the main window you can sort by date, title, ID, published, or draft.
As far as I know it doesn’t handle tags, only categories. But I may be wrong. It does post technorati tags. You may have seen I had a run of posts with technorati tags in them, but have stopped using them.
Posted on March 6, 2007 at 10:09 pm
steve offutt said:
yo, where do you find the time! do you get service hours for blogging?
Steve & Amanda
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 1:37 am
retroman said:
Thanks for the resource. I’m sick of wordpress’ image uploads and will probably try this out. CBB
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 4:27 am
Phil said:
Hmm, this seems quite interesting might have to consider giving this a try. I’d like to include more images in my posts but find it such a hassle. I’m interested in how it works with tags, I use UTW as part of my archives system so it’s pretty key for me, I only have 3 categories.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 5:02 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Steve: Time management bro. Time management.
@ Phil: I’m not too sure on how ecto would handle UTW. I bet you could tweak some settings and make it happen.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 8:22 am
Ryan Couch said:
Great!! I’ll have to try this out on seventeenthree.com.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 11:34 am
Are You New to Blogging? | Fighting to Stay Awake said:
[...] Review: ecto Desktop Publisher [...]
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Dennis said:
Hey Shawn…I have been looking into a publisher but just haven’t sat down and looked to hard. How does Ecto handle Technorati tags?
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 6:24 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Dennis: ecto handles Technorati tags flawlessly. It is actually a built in compontent. If you look on one of the post composition screenshots on the right hand side there is a comments list, and then a tab for ‘Tags’. There is code built in and when you select tags, it adds those as technorati tag links at the bottom of your post. Super easy.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Andy said:
Can you send content to specific fields - it all seems to go into the body field? I’d like to try it, but their tech support hasn’t come back to me, so as the net’s resident Ecto expert, it’s over to you
Posted on March 8, 2007 at 2:20 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Andy: Sorry, but I’m not sure what you mean…
Posted on March 8, 2007 at 7:13 am
Andy said:
Well, I have set up three custom fields in which I can post specific things: summary (a snippet for the sidebar), MP3 - where the name of an MP3 file goes, and to which my player points to pick up if it needs to load, and Link -where I would put a specific link to be displayed a particular way. But when I tested Ecto, everything went into ‘Body’ which is the main story area, as with WP. What I need, is to be able to specify what goes into what field - do you know if Ecto can do that?
Posted on March 8, 2007 at 7:29 am
C. Wess Daniels said:
I love ecto, I’ve had it for more than a year now and it helps me power out post after post. Shawn, I totally agree with you, the image editor is awesome, and I didn’t even know about that tips you showed us, I am going to try something like this now as well.
Posted on March 9, 2007 at 8:37 am
Anonymous said:
The best desktop blog publisher out there: ecto. This is a great review and how to for setup…
ecto desktop blog publisher. The best one out there. This is a great review and how to for setup…
Posted on March 26, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Bruce said:
Phil, UTW works well with ecto but you need to hack your xmlrpc.php file as per Robin Lu here. If it helps there’s a pre-hacked version on my site here.
Posted on March 31, 2007 at 2:25 am
sma Notes said:
Mac-Blogging-Ecto: Review / How To: ecto Desktop Blog Publisher | Fighting to Stay Awake…
Review / How To: ecto Desktop Blog Publisher | Fighting to Stay Awake:
Review / How To: ecto Desktop Blog Publisher
March 06th, 2007 | WordPress, Technology
I have been using ecto (lowercase “e†on purpose) with my WordPr…
Posted on March 31, 2007 at 5:07 am
Donna said:
I haven’t used ecto yet, but have tried both Qumana and BlogJet. I’m not yet convinced Ecto is the way to go either. So far, if the two I tried, the formatting in the WYSIWYG editor creates ugly code and never publishes 100% the way I set it to in the blog editor. It seems like you say (in the example) that ecto also creates ugly code?
Posted on April 6, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Tour My Mac: Applications Worth Paying For | The Fight Spot said:
[...] more can I say about ecto that I didn’t say here? Well actually something funny is that a few days after writing my review on ecto setup I [...]
Posted on April 20, 2007 at 5:34 am
Motherduce: The Blog » links for 2007-04-24 said:
[...] Review / How To: ecto Desktop Blog Publisher | The Fight Spot Nice review of ecto - still not sure if it’s for me… (tags: blogging apple mac software) [...]
Posted on April 24, 2007 at 6:27 pm
links for 2007-04-25 « Motherduce - Daily Links said:
[...] Review / How To: ecto Desktop Blog Publisher | The Fight Spot Nice review of ecto - still not sure if it’s for me… (tags: blogging apple mac software) [...]
Posted on April 24, 2007 at 7:24 pm