Urban Vancouver

How Do I Post to Urban Vancouver to From Outside Urban Vancouver?

By Richard Eriksson on September 15, 2005 - 4:06pm

You don't necessarily need to post to Urban Vancouver using the web-based blogging tool. You still need to create an account with Urban Vancouver, but you can use so-called 'offline blogging tools' to post to your Urban Vancouver blog.

The XML-RPC interface URL you need to know for Urban Vancouver is http://www.urbanvancouver.com/xmlrpc.php The URL doesn't point to a standard web page but rather a script on your site, so it may look differently than what you expect if you loaded it in a regular web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Find the setting in your favorite offline publishing tool to input the interface's URL.

Settings for specific tools:

MarsEdit for Mac OS X

1. add a new account in MarsEdit
• To do this, make sure you see the "Weblogs" drawer on MarsEdit. You may need to click the "Weblogs" button on the toolbar.
• Click the plus (+) sign at the bottom of the list of weblogs.
• Type in your weblog's title, as well as the URL of the site.
• MarsEdit will try to determined the settings for the site. If it cannot determine the settings, you will have to input them manually.
2. MarsEdit's "Drupal" setting does not currently enable all of the features that recent Drupal versions support. Instead, change the "Software" setting to "Movable Type".
3. click "OK" and refresh the blog.

(These instructions are based on Bryght developer James Walker's instructions.)

ecto for Mac OS X

1. On the main window of ecto, click the "Accounts" button on the toolbar.
2. Click "Add" and type in the URL of your site.
3. ecto uses "Movable Type" as its default API. This is the correct setting for publishing to Drupal-based sites.
4. Type in the URL of your site, plus xmlrpc.php. Using Urban Vancouver as the example, the URL would be http://www.urbanvancouver.com/xmlrpc.com
5. Type in your username and password.
6. Click "Next".
7. Type in a name for the account. This will show up in your list of weblogs that you use ecto to post.
8. Click "Next" at the "Default settings" screen. These settings do not affect how content is posted to a Drupal-based site.
9. Click "Finish"

To post content from ecto:

1. Click the "New" button.
2. Type in a title.
3. Click on the main content box and type your content. You can click the "A" button on the toolbar for a rich-text editing interface much like what the browser-based interface uses. Click the "<>" to work in HTML mode.
4. Click "Post" to publish your content. If you want to set something aside in draft mode, click "Save". If you click "Save", if will not appear on the site until you click "Post".
   • If you are editing the post, make sure to click "Post" and send as an "edit". If you save as a new post, the original remain and a new post will be created.

At the top are generic instructions that should apply to all offline blogging tools, though they may differ slightly in how to configure the software. Did we miss your favourite offline blogging tool? Contact us and let us know what we've missed and we will update this page accordingly.

This article is based on Bryght's guide to offline tools and is as such is released under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.