5 Reasons I Use Ecto Desktop Blogging Software with WordPress

Posted on 08. Mar, 2008 by Brian Wong in Blogging

Ecto is a desktop blogging companion to Wordpress and many other blogging platforms. Check it out here:

http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/

Reason 1: I can create drafts of my posts on my desktop

Sometimes, when I get an idea for a post, I can quickly launch Ecto and create a draft post and save it on my desktop before I forget about it. Later when I am ready to post it on my blog, I just click publish.

Reason 2: Easily add graphics and images

With Ecto, I can just drag and drop images from my desktop or from iPhoto to the post (like the screenshot above). Ecto handles the formatting and uploading of the source file to my Wordpress server.

Reason 3: I can quickly add Amazon affiliate links

I read a lot of books each month and I can’t help recommending great books. Amazon affiliates links are very tricky to add to Wordpress posts because of the complex html. With Ecto, you set your Amazon affiliate ID in the settings, every time you want to recommend a book, just click on the Amazon Helper button and you can locate the book. Ecto creates the thumbnail image of the book, author and title with a click. Your affiliate link is automatically attached!

Reason 4: Make a blog post when surfing the web

Ecto has a simple browser bookmark called “Ectorize”. When I want to blog about a website I am visiting, I just highlight the words I want to blog about and click on this bookmark on my browswer. Ecto will launch and automatically quote the reference items with a link back to the source.

Reason 5: Rich text formating, time stamping and word count.

Ok, maybe there’s more than 5 reasons to use Ecto but basically it makes formatting you posts very easy and you can run a word count to make sure your blog posts are consistently formatted before you publish.

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Tags: blog tools, ecto, Wordpress

About the Author

Brian Wong is a serial entrepreneur, Internet marketer and social media marketing expert. Brian helps individuals to build and monetize their personal brand online.

16 Comments

Vidal Aponte

22. Oct, 2008

Hello Sir,

Thank you for the information you have helped me alot. I just wanted to ask 1 question. In my blog, where do I go to create a new page?

Thank you very much!

Vidal Aponte

Brian Wong

23. Oct, 2008

Go to your WordPress Dashboard and select “Write”, the choose to write a new page instead of a new post.

George

23. Oct, 2008

Hi,
I folloed all steps as you explained, But while testing the same I am getting 404 error page. what could be the probable causes?

Brian Wong

23. Oct, 2008

Hi George,

Make sure that step 4 and step 7 uses the same page. The most likely cause of your 404 error is that the permalink to your search results page is different from the one you specified in Step 4.

MARO

24. Oct, 2008

Hello Brian my name is maro. I commenting because I want to know if you could do a commentaries for us on iPod items that we have. Please write to me as soon as possible. Thank you!!!

MARO

24. Oct, 2008

Actually what I meant with the comment above was if you could do reviews. E-mail me…

gabor

04. Nov, 2008

Hi,

Thanks for your article. I just ran into the problem that I can’t override the searchbox width of 795.

i have tried to do it by hand, but no avail.

i normally use firefox, but i managed to slip through with 500 px width on one occasion only.

Strange – anyone else experience the same thing?

Anyone else find a work-around?

cheers – thanks again!

gabor

04. Nov, 2008

I think I just answered my own question….

After some mucking about, I found that 795px is the minimum if you want ads on Top AND Right.

I tried Top and Bottom and 500px worked just fine…

Brian Wong

04. Nov, 2008

Glad you worked it out and thanks for sharing the solution.

Shantanu Goel

07. Nov, 2008

Hey Brian
Nice tutorial. Actually I just wrote a post a cpl of days ago telling ppl about how to add adsense for search to 404 pages here:
http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/11/06/make-money-out-of-nothing-add-google-adsense-for-search-to-your-404-page.html

But your way of telling things is quite easy to follow. Will link to your post from mine.

Doug Smith

14. Jan, 2009

Great idea! After a hack attempt on my blog where the hacker entered a malformed sql query into the WP search box I looked for other search ideas. The bug that allowed these hacks was fixed long ago but I felt uneasy that people were still trying. This idea allowed me to remove the WP search widget and monetize at the same time.

Thanks again!

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