As my handful of followers may (or may not) have noticed, my blog has not been updated much lately. A combination of life getting in the way of doing this (and other equally important things), and my favourite blogging app no longer working.
Up until today, I’ve used BlogDesk. A quick, simple and easy to use blogging tool. I was very impressed to find such a great basic free app.
But recently it stopped working for me with WordPress.com. Giving me this error:
“XML Parsing Error: Invalid procedure call or argument”
I contacted the author, after a couple days he asked me to send him an error log, which I did. After a week of not hearing back, I have given up hope for BlogDesk. I assume it’s a new incompatibility issue with changes to WordPress or WordPress.com, but I don’t know for sure, and I’m tired of wasting time trying to figure it out. So I went on a quest to find an alternative to BlogDesk.
After wasted hours searching for reviews and trying other free blogging tools, I settled for Windows Live Writer. I say settle cause I was avoiding having to use a Microsoft product, as all MS products are bloated, have dependencies on one or many other MS products to work, and are typically HUGE installs. Plus Live Writer is somewhat more complicated to use and learn, and I loved the basic concepts of BlogDesk.
But here I am using Windows Live Writer, and it works. No errors, short learning curve, and did I mention it works? I’ll have no better luck getting support from MS for a free tool than I would from a small company, or a one man developer, but I can likely depend on Microsoft keeping it updated when things change…till they abandon it of course.
But one thing tech history has shown us, is that Microsoft does not easily abandon products, free or paid. Unlike Google who abandons products all the time without notice, when someone thinks it isn’t making money directly. But that’s a whole other rant. 🙂
If BlogDesk has stopped working for you too, give Windows Live Writer a chance.
2014-01-07 EDIT: Six weeks after contacting the author of BlogDesk and complaining that it still didn’t work with WordPress, he replied with this:
I‘m sorry I don’t have a solution for you, but apparently there are
other users with the same problem. If you google for “wordpress” and
“server accepts POST requests only” you will find a lot of pages
talking about this. Please keep me informed if you find a solution,
thanks!