Desktop publishing agents, what do you think?

I've been having problems with TypePad and they suggested I use a desktop publishing agent like BlogJet,
w.bloggar, Zempt.  I tried Zempt, but kept getting errors when trying to set up the account.  w.bloggar looked like it would be great, but I can't figure out how to send trackbacks with it and when I try to publish an article I get an error.  I did try Performancing for Firefox, which beats the pants off all the others, but TypePad help told me there were problems interfacing the two programs. I didn't have any problems with Performancing.   Does anybody have any suggestions?  Can trackbacks be sent with w.bloggar and if so how?

UPDATE:  Andy Piper at The Lost Outpost just came to the rescue.  He suggests Windows Live Writer.  I'm checking it out and will let you know what I think.

 

While your waiting, check out some of the news items below:

Rice Indicates Slight Shift in Stance on Iran Sanctions, New York Times
ARE THE DEMS (AND THE MSM) GUILTY OF TREASON?, from And You Thought You Were Cranky
What's A Trackback?, from Seth Godin's Blog
Know Thine Enemy, from Columbia Journalism Review
Official: U.S. moves to sanction N.Korea, Yahoo News
Iran offers security help to Iraqi PM, Reuters News
U.S. faces home-grown attack threat, experts say, Reuters News
Former JI leader warns of new terror attacks this year, Yahoo News
Attack on Iraqi Shi'ite mosque kills 7 - state TV, Reuters News
Al-Qaeda Calls on Muslims To Fight in Lebanon, Israel, Washington Post
Arab leaders wasted billions, from Voices.In.My.Head
Blumenthal suddenly unveils as McCarthy, from Villagers With Torches
Ten Reasons Why the West Will Lose the War on Terror (the pessimist’s view), from TMK's Bacon Bits
Winger Comics has a great new entry
15,000 Future Saboteurs. Updated and Russia, Orthodox Church, Angry muslimes, Gulf Oil and Chinese Curses. Yes, it all inter-relates. Trust me., from Islamanazi
First Cup from  bRight&Early
A New Arab World? at The Real Truth

Comments

[Rastaman]

Thanks, Popovich and Debbie. The timestamp does the trick and I'll go ahead and get Adhesive anyway, it should be faster and less hassle to use.

Rastaman

[Popovich]

Rastaman, to keep a post on top you will need to get a "sticky" plugin for Wordpress. For example Adhesive. Tick a box, and thats all - post stays on top.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/8711

This is of course for the standalone version, but it looks like thats what you're using anyway.

Alternatively Wordpress allows you to manually set a post's timestamp - just set it in the future, and the post will stay on top until that time/date.

[Popovich]

I had actually recommended Wordpress to you in a reply to your comment over at my site, yesterday, you may not have seen it.

Here's copy and paste of what I said:

"I can recommend Wordpress as a great alternative to Typepad. And its absolutely free. Go to www.wordpress.com and it will take you less than a minute to create a blog (eg. righttruth.wordpress.com).
The free version comes with about 40 themes to choose from - just click on Presentation to have a look at them.
You can then simply import your old blog into to. Export your Typepad blog to a file (should be an option somewhere in there) and then in the new Wordpress blog go to Manage->Import and select the file. and voila - you’ve got a new blog with all your old posts in it that costs nothing and looks great.

I am not in any way affiliated with Wordpress, btw. I use their stand alone platform that I host myself (and I am cheap also)"
http://www.taoofdefiance.com/2006/09/10/an-islamic-reformation/#comments

I use Performing with Wordpress, btw, for my shorter quick posts, and it works great.

[Rastaman]

I'd just been reading a lot of comments about this and it seems a lot of people are switching over to WordPress, which is what I use and is still considered to be the best. I hear that it has a few bugs but none have ever come to my attention, so they're probably the sort of thing the professional nitpickers like to gripe about. The only thing I haven't figured out how to do yet with WordPress is keep a post at the top when I add a new one.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[Debbie]

Thanks, tommy, I will check it out. I haven't heard of that one.

[tommy]

give qumana a look too.

http://www.qumana.com/

[Debbie]

Thanks Andy Piper for all your help today, you've been great.

Butch, good idea, but I think this Windows Live Writer is great. If you ever have trouble publishins directly to blogger, try this out.

[Butch]

Debbie,

Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about the desktop publishing tools you mentioned. Sorry.

Hey, send an email to Richard Bingham (Freedomszone/Hyscience) and see if he can ask Tim about it...

[Andy Piper]

Debbie, thanks for visiting my blog. You're right - w.bloggar doesn't have any direct support for Trackbacks. This isn't a problem for me, since my blog host (Wordpress.com) will automatically send trackbacks for me on anything I post - I don't even have to look up the trackback URLs, in most cases.

Windows Live Writer does support Trackbacks. Take a look at my blog entries about WLW. I much prefer it over w.bloggar now (the fact that the author of w.bloggar is entirely unresponsive hasn't helped, either).