Blogging Tools and BlogEngine.NET
I've been testing out the MetaWeblog API of BlogEngine.NET a lot over the past week. It seems most of the tools I have tried have slightly different implementations of the API which have required some minor tweak to the code in one way or another.
So far I've tested with the following:
<li>BlogJet </li>
<li>Digg (Blog it functionality) </li>
<li>Windows Live Writer </li>
<li>Word 2007 </li>
<li>Zoundry</li>
Other than Digg, the others are all full fledged desktop apps for blogging. They all have their good and bad (to me anyway). The best after my initial review were BlogJet and Windows Live Writer. I have not used Word 2007 as much as the others since it is not on my main BlogEngine.NET development PC.
BlogJet has the most polish of all the desktop tools I tried. I like the way it handles images and the layout of the application. It has a nice auto replace feature that I missed elsewhere. The only drawbacks were that it does have a price attached and I had an odd problem with it importing some posts in the test blog. The test blog posts however may be at fault. I've had no problems with my live blog or newly created test posts using any method. The problem is so minor that if it weren't for the cost, I would likely have ended up using this program moving forward.
Windows Live Writer is almost as polished and seems to have similiar features. The layout is not as nice, but I think the price (free) helps makes up for it. I also know that WLW has a community writing plugins to extend the functionality. (If BlogJet has this, I'm unaware.) Hopefully, I can find a code snippit plug in to my liking.
All this leads to 2 questions on my mind.
<li>What other tools will people use that take advantage of BlogEngine.NET's MetaWeblog API? (I'd like to know what else to test and take advantage of myself.) </li>
<li>Since I'll be working with Windows Live Writer moving forward (unless someone can sway me into purchasing BlogJet), what are the best plug ins you've used?</li>