5 Reasons I Use Ecto Desktop Blogging Software with WordPress

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