As most of you know by now we are big users of Ecto for editing our weblogs, across all platforms including WordPress and Typepad. Lack of Ecto support for WordPress is one of the main reasons I stuck with Typepad so long. Ecto just makes things so much faster and more convenient.
One very large irritation when using Ecto with WordPress is the inability to get a hold of the Pages section via XML-RPC. Developer Adriaan Tijsseling is tired of questions about why doesn’t this work, pointing out quite curtly in his Ecto 3 progress notes that it’s not in his power to fix:
Pages isn’t in the API for editing blogs, so if you want to edit pages, you have to ask WP to allow editing pages via the API. It’s nothing any blog client can implement.
There are two solutions out there. One is to modify the core WordPress files, specifically wp-includes/functions-post.php.
John prefers that we not modify any core files for the sake of future compatibility (we got burned on this on what is now a very difficult upgrade on another CMS platform).
Andrew Grant has come up with a WordPress plugin to allow all sorts of games with keywords and to improve compatibility with Windows Live Writer (whatever WLW is).
His plugin has some side benefits:
Static WordPress pages (e.g. ‘About’) can be edited via Ecto / Windows Live Writer.
I suspect we’ll go this route. Unfortunately I want to edit my pages now (and need Ecto to do so efficiently).
We’ll get there.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
And did theire ever com a XML-RPC plugin for static pages????? Would love to write my pages local with “blog thing” Greetings Ton Hermans
Hello Ton,
That’s a great question. I had forgotten about it but I had asked our top programmer at the time as well Adriaan Tijsseling. Apparently the editing of static pages via XML-RPC is not supported within Wordpress and hence not within Ecto.
We can continue to dream.
If your using Wordpress, take a close look at our Foliopress WYSIWYG. It’s almost as good an editing environment as Ecto.
Thank you very much for the link to foliopress!! For a long time I am looking for the perfect solution for others and myself to communicate. At 45 soon becoming 46 it looks like the the possibilities are their just to grab them. Got a X serve on the backbone and a macbook in my bag. It is very nice to see what you are doing Alec, I worked for 13 years as a advertising photographer and make dance movies as a hobby (my daughter is lucky to be a dancer, not many pass the auditions in the Netherlands), for the last 12 years I work as a Apple system administrator. I think we have the same passions (do you like blond women to (lol)) Greetings and thanks for the tip!
Hello Ton,
If you have a PHP5 capable server (PHP4 is deprecated but still in wide use), you will be very, very happy with Foliopress WYSIWYG. Life changing almost for people who use a lot of images.
I’d love to hear more about your dance films. Send me an email. We do have a lot in common.
Wordpress now supports the creation of static pages via the XML-RPC wp.newPage function
I’ve used WLW to post a new static page to my blog but it’s limited and I need something more flexible.
I’ve been trying to find a PHP script that will let me create new pages but everything I’ve found so far only posts pages.
Hello Patrick,
I’ve played around with posting to my weblogs via XML-RPC, using both Ecto and Marsedit (as well as some of the Firefox plugins). I’ve tried lots of different methods. In the end, I’ve found our own Foliopress WYSIWYG far more reliable and more capable than any external editor.
If you do find an XML-RPC solution for editing pages that you like, please bookmark this page and come back and let me know about it.