Now that I have four separate blogs going, I decided to try a blog editor to see if it would make things simpler. Logging in and out of separate blogs, waiting for pages to load, etc. can be tedious, so I thought it might be worth a try. I considered Qumana, because I know a lot of people use it and really like it, but when I found that Performancing actually worked within the Firefox browser, I decided to go with it.
Pros:
- The set up was fairly simple, and it was easy to jump in and start using it.
- It opens in a pane at the bottom of your browser window, which I really liked, and you can drag text right off of the page you’re viewing.
- If you’re not ready to publish, you can easily save the draft to your blog to work on later. This may be my favorite feature. Often I’ll run across something on the web that I want to blog about, and it’s sort of a pain to open another tab and get into my blog just to post a quick link and a couple of notes to follow up on later.
- It has a place to enter Technorati tags to include with your post.
- You can use the built-in FTP tool instead of opening a separate FTP program.
Cons:
- Including an image in a post was not quick and easy. In fact I gave up trying to figure it out. It was just taking too much time.
- It has a built-in blog metrics system, and even though I had signed up for it, when I entered my username and password, I kept getting an error.
- Maybe my biggest gripe is the automatic inclusion of a footnote in the post (see below “powered by…”). This really annoys me. Sure, I can delete it, but it’s just unecessary to include that in the program.
So, in conclusion I think for me, Performancing is a great tool to quickly save drafts into my blog without having to log all the way in, but that’s about it.
What program do you use, if any? Should I give another one a try?
powered by performancing firefox
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I tried Qumana and Performancing. They both have nice features, but in the end I decided that it was just as easy and time effective to log in and out of each of my blogs, write the post and go.
You can save drafts in WordPress. Just choose Save instead of Publish. Then when you come back click on the title of the post you want to continue. I do this all the time.
I frequently save things as drafts while logged into my blogs, so I was glad Performancing had that feature. It’s the only reason I keep using it really.
Randa; I write three blogs and contribute to a couple others, and find that a blog editor is a huge timesaver compared to dealing with the editors in blog software.
Some love Performancing, but I just couldn’t fall in love (I tried).
BlogDesk is an excellent editor that I’d be using now if it didn’t have a few problems with my system. Try it (it’s free), and tell me it doesn’t save you an hour a week, minimum.
I’ve settled on Windows LiveWriter (despite the typically Microsoft clumsiness) and think it’s similar to BlogDesk.
If you’re writing several blogs, give the above two editors a try. Both are free, both setup in seconds, and both are huge time savers.
Good luck!
Tom Chandler
heya… you can choose not to have that silly tag “Powered by Performancing” by going to settings/publishing features and unchecking the right box.
Try it, that’s what I did.
Tom, thanks for the two programs… I’m off to try both!
[...] have posted in the past about how much I use the Performancing (now called ScribeFire) blogging extension for Firefox. The Performancing site has undergone some changes lately and one of the more exciting ones is the [...]
Thank you for the review – using a blog editor is something that I have not had an occasion to try out yet, but it might be a convenient feature if I ever wind up having to juggle multiple blogs.
char, i also do the same with wordpress. its easier that way, i save it then i go back to it when i feel like writting again.