Blogging From My Desktop, Laptop and iPhone
Sep
22
Written by:
9/22/2009 2:49 PM
With the recent upgrade of DNNDev.com to DNN 5, I've updated a number of modules – among them the DNN Blog module. I've been blogging very irregularly for a couple of years on the site. Previously I limited my missives to just product and site news and announcements mostly. The main reason for this is that the Blog module historically has not been quite up-to-snuff. It was OK for very basic blogging, but since my blogging involved a lot of source code, the module's editor caused more than a few frustrated episodes as it blew up my painstakingly formatted code snippets. Since I didn't have time to write my own module to overcome the limitations of the Blog module, I ended up only posting when it was required or when I had a LOT of time to properly craft my posts. All that (well, most of that) has changed with the recent upgrades.
My biggest problem with DotNetNuke's (DNN) Blog module has been the online editor. Regardless of which Rich Text editor you're using, it is nearly impossible to insert source code into your posts and later edit the post. Invariably, when you go to edit, the editor tries to re-interpret your source code as actual HTML. What you end up with is a mish-mash encoded and decoded HTML – completely screwing up your entry and all the time you took to format your code. So, I was forced to follow the cumbersome process of: 1) compose my posts in the editor; 2) copy the raw HTML code from the editor into Notepad and save the file; 3) save the post. Then, when I went back in to edit the post, either to change a typo or do some more styling – whether it was right then, or some time down the road – I had to open the file locally in Notepad, edit the post in the Blog module, and copy the raw HTML from Notepad back into the Source code view of the editor.
Then, along comes MetaPost Professional. I found this commercial module on Snowcovered on the recommendation of one of my XMod MVP's. The main purpose behind MetaPost is to provide a DNN service for the MetaWeblog API. Frankly, I'd never heard of the API until I installed MetaPost. FYI, while the latest version of the Blog module can be accessed with the MetaWeblog API too, I'm using MetaPost because it extends this API to cover other modules while also adding a number of auto-formatting features and functionality. While you don't need MetaPost to do what I've done, I highly recommend the module for anyone who wants to do offline editing of the blog or the several other modules for which MetaPost has providers.
So, what has the MetaWeblog API done for me? First and foremost, it has allowed me to use the free Windows Live Writer (WLW) from Microsoft as an offline Blog editor. That alone makes it easier to create blogs. I can work on them in pieces, save the drafts locally and, when I'm ready, click to publish them. More importantly, WLW plugins make it possible for me to more easily include code snippets that can be edited later without causing formatting havoc. Finally, with the help of Peter Donker I was able to link one of these plugins with a dynamic syntax highlighter. Now my code snippets look like code snippets.
My blog output has significantly increased with these changes. However, being stuck in the airport today has provided the opportunity to discover one more way the MetaWeblog API can aid my blogging efforts. Since I was trying to conserve laptop battery power, I began wondering if I could do some basic blogging on my iPhone. After all, Apple tells me (and if Steve says it, it must be so, right?) that "there's an app for that". Well, is there an app for blogging to the DNN Blog module from my iPhone? To quote Sarah Palin, "You betcha'".
While there may be 'an app for that', I should say there aren't a lot of apps for that, but there are a couple and one of them does the job. I purchased the iBlogger app from the App Store for my iPhone. While it is geared primarily to work with the most popular blogging services, it can also be setup to work with any MetaWeblog API-based blog service. Now I can blog while away from my desktop or laptop or, now, my iPhone.
Is it blogging nirvana? Not at all. This post is actually being written from WLW on my laptop (I found an outlet). You don't want to write blogs of significant length on the iPhone. iBlogger doesn't have every feature you'd want in an offline editor. It doesn't allow me to do syntax highlighting like WLW, for instance, but it does what you need when you're blogging from the road – including the ability to add tags, photos, and links – and that's what really matters.