HeySage

While The Sage is waiting for Episode 1 of The HeySage Podcast to render he felt it necessary to write a quick review/tutorial on the TextMate Blogging bundle. The blogging bundle in TextMate only takes a few minutes to configure and you can configure the preferences file for one or multiple blogs. There is a screencast on the TextMate site which clearly demonstrates how to set things up and use the bundle. For those who prefer reading the steps are as follows:

Tutorial

Select Bundles -> Blogging -> Setup Blogs
Enter your Blog Name on the left margin under #Blog Name followed by the endpoint URL (e.g admin@myBlog.com/xmlrpc.php) under URL
Next you must save this file
The next step is to test your settings
Select Bundles -> Blogging -> Fetch Post
You will be prompted to select your blog (if you have configured multiple blogs) and then asked to enter your password. The password will then be stored in your keychain.

Now that the setup is complete all that is left is to make a post. To do that the steps are as follows:

Select File -> New from Template -> Blogging -> Blog Post (whatever format you would like, The Sage likes Markdown)
From here, all that needs to be done is Type, Type, Type, away.
Once finished select command-control-P to post to your blog (or Bundles -> Blogging -> Post to Blog)
The post will upload and the page will appear in your default browser. At the same time a header for your post will be placed on your markdown document (if you publish using markdown). An example of the header is shown below.

Type: Blog Post (Markdown) Blog: HeySage Link: http://heysage.com/?p=8 Post: 6785949 Title: Technical Difficulties: Adobe CS3 Press Release T Date: 2007-03-27 06:27:11 -0700 Pings: On Comments: On Category: Uncatergorized

Review

The Sage recently heard somebody state that the TextMate blogging bundle does not work that well. The Sage has found it to work wonderfully. You can even drag an image onto your markdown document and the file will be uploaded to your default server location and the link is automatically inserted into your document. The Sage can not think of anything more convenient.

A Quick Note on MarkDown

The Sage is an advocate of Markdown for its ease of use and overall appearance (it’s much easier on the eyes).

PHP Markdown is a port to PHP of the Markdown program written by John Gruber. “Markdown” is two things: a plain text markup syntax, and a software tool that converts the plain text markup to HTML for publishing on the web. PHP Markdown can work as a plug-in for WordPress and bBlog, as a modifier for the Smarty templating engine, or as a remplacement for textile formatting in any software that support textile.

You can download the Markdown Plugin here.

If you are looking for something more full featured, MarsEdit is your answer. MarsEdit has support for use of external editors including TextMate, BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, and TextWrangler. With the recent purchase of MarsEdit by RedSweaterSoftware, we should expect to see great things in the future of MarsEdit.

Ultimately, the blogging bundle in TextMate works quite well. Give it a try you might just find it more useful than you might have thought.

Technorati Tags: TextMate, TextMate Blogging Bundle, Markdown, Markdown Plugin, MarsEdit