MarsEdit, a Radio weblog editor

 By Donovan Watts
 MarsEdit and its companion NetNewsWire comprise refreshing new alternatives to Radio's built in news aggregator and weblog publishing interface. Once installed, you might never visit the Radio Desktop site again!
 Update: MarsEdit and NetNewsWire were acquired by NewsGator.
 There are multiple ways to create and edit posts, or weblog entries, to your Radio weblog. My preference is MarsEdit by Ranchero Software. Why MarsEdit instead of the Radio Desktop home page? Or David Brown's mailEdit tool? Or Radio's own built-in Mail-to-Weblog preference? How about Daniel Berlinger's effort, Archipelago? Or FM Radio? Well, I've tried most of these solutions and MarsEdit is my favorite.
 Here's why
 Simple, intuitive setup.
 Adding HTML to your posts is easy.
 Adding and re-using previously uploaded images to your posts is a snap.
 There is a Preview window so I can see exactly what my post will look like.
 It's not a browser interface. It's a full fledged application.
 I can post from a web browser.
 MarsEdit offers spell checking.
 I can save posts as a draft for later editing.
 Fully supports Radio's categories feature.
 It's fairly inexpensive.
 Great support.
 Released as a public beta on September 21, 2004, MarsEdit is an easy to use weblog editing application for Mac OS X. After configuring it with some basic preferences so it can "talk" to your installation of Radio, you can easily create new posts for your Radio weblog. It's not a WYSIWYG environment like Dreamweaver but it is easy to add HTML to your posts by simply clicking and pointing.
 For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll assume that you have Radio up and running already and that you know how to post a weblog entry to your weblog.
 Download and install MarsEdit
 Download MarsEdit (Mac OS X only. At the time of this writing, MarsEdit version 1.0b3 was available)
 Install MarsEdit by dragging it from the installer disc image to your Applications folder.
 Start MarsEdit.
 The first time you start MarsEdit, it will ask you some questions about your Radio weblog. For example, my personal weblog, iceplant radio, is located at http://www.iceplant.org/. Enter your Radio weblog name and URL and click OK.
 Diagram 1. Weblog Name and URL.
 When I attempted this, MarsEdit couldn't quite figure out the correct settings. It gave me the option to Edit Settings so I did.
 On the Settings window, make your settings look similar to the following screen shots.
 In the System tab, choose Radio as the Software setting. Enter http://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2 as the RPC URL. And finally, enter 'home' as the Blog ID.
 Diagram 2. Weblog Configuration System Tab.
 The Defaults tab should have the Post to home page selection checked.
 Diagram 3. Weblog Configuration Defaults Tab.
 I would recommend selecting all three choices in the pings section near the bottom of the Posting tab.
 Diagram 4. Weblog Configuration Posting Tab.
 Click OK.
 Your weblog is added to the Weblogs drawer, which should already be open. If it is not open, click on Weblogs in the Toolbar. If you ever want to edit the settings we just configured for your Radio weblog, click on your weblog name, and then click on the Edit button at the bottom of the drawer.
 Finally, make sure the Blogger API is turned on in Radio or else it won't work.
 Now, let's test it out by creating a post.
 Create a new post
 Click on New Post in the Toolbar. Enter a Title, a URL if appropriate, and some text in the form area below. You'll notice that I used paragraph tags to wrap my entry in HTML. Depending on your Radio theme, you may be able to leave these paragraph tags out to make things even easier.
 Diagram 5. A new post.
 Once you've entered your weblog text, click on Post in the Toolbar to save the post to your Radio weblog.
 Now you'll need to enter your Username and Password.
 Before you click OK, make sure that Radio is running on your computer and is online. I opt to store the password in my keychain since I'm the only one who uses this computer and I don't want to have to enter my login information every time I post an entry to my blog.
 Diagram 6. Enter your username and password.
 MarsEdit will pass the weblog post off to Radio and Radio will then add it to your weblog home page.
 Diagram 7. Your weblog entry.
 If all goes well, you have just posted an entry to your weblog and it was upstreamed to your site. Now, let's edit that post and learn how MarsEdit handles links to other sites.
 Edit an existing post
 Click on your weblog name in the Weblogs drawer. Then click Refresh in the Toolbar. MarsEdit will fetch the recent posts to your weblog. You can change the number of posts MarsEdit retrieves from the configuration window we setup earlier. The default is 10.
 Diagram 8. A list of your posts.
 You should see the entry you just posted at the top of the list. Double click on the title of the post to edit the entry.
 I want to make the words MarsEdit and Radio UserLand link to their respective web sites. If you know HTML, feel free to enter the code necessary. Or, you can do it this way.
 Double click on the word MarsEdit to highlight it. Then choose Add Link from the HTML drop down menu.
 
 Type http://ranchero.com/marsedit/ and click OK. You'll notice the word MarsEdit is now wrapped in the proper HTML code to make it a link. Do the same thing for the words Radio UserLand. When you are finished, click Post in the Toolbar to upstream your changes.
 Upload Images and Files
 In a future tutorial, I will cover image and file uploading. As with weblog posting, there are multiple ways in which you might add images and files to your Radio weblog but they are not as simple to use as one would hope. MarsEdit really shines in this area by making it easy to upload images and files to your site.
 Support
 The MarsEdit Help book, available under the Help menu in MarsEdit is not an after thought fortunately. Explore it first when you need help.
 A support mailing list for MarsEdit has been set up. To subscribe, send email to marsedit-subscribe@notabug.com. To post to the list, send email to marsedit@notabug.com.
 The MarsEdit FAQ might help as well.
 Price
 MarsEdit costs $24.95 (USD) - Single-User License
 For two or more users, $19.95 per user - Multi-User Site License
 Requirements
 Radio UserLand (any platform)
 MarsEdit requires Mac OS X 10.3 or greater
 Discuss this page
 I started a thread on this page on the Radio UserLand Discussion Forum.
 Creative Commons License
 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
 Creative Commons License