How to blog with ExpressionEngine?

I‘ve been using MarsEdit for many years with EE. Since v4, on publish, Metaweblog API gives an error which causes MarsEdit to crash.

It probably would not be too much effort to fix the API, but as it doesn‘t really fit into the category of “lipstick on a pig“ (i.e. pretty much all updates since EE2), it’s not going to happen.

Anyway, how dare you not just use EE’s fabulous slick fashionably black UI for all your content creation needs?

You are correct, this is broken since v4 (years now). I have tested every possible Blog software with that API and none at a single one worked. I used MS Word in the past, and I was sure there was some issue with their API but after testing over 10 other pieces of software that are compatible with the API not one worked. The issue is Expression Engine.

I would be ashamed to ship the add-on officially with their software that is not working for years and it was reported to them more than once. I have posted this here in the forums multiple times in the past 2 years, I have posted this on Slack, I have contacted them. I have done everything that is possible human on my side. The new owners will not reply a single post on this forum that talks about this bug because they don’t care about fixing it. The best I got was on Slack that they would fix it on the next release, that was over a year ago. And granted, it was never fixed.

I don’t have any hopes for them to fix this now when they don’t even bother to update their main modules like the forums or the wiki. On their own add-on page it said was last updated 5 years ago. Shameful. If that is how they maintain their official modules you can completely forget they will update a tiny plugin like the Meta weblog API. Most people probably are using WordPress for blogging which supports everything. I’m not even sure what EE does better now, blog? No. Forum? No. Wiki? No. CMS? No. It’s not better at anything over other free software.

I’m considering moving after years out of EE because I have no trust on the new owners or developers. If this is how they support their product imagine starting a commercial business on EE and then expecting paid support from them. I also contacted them before and since I own some paid modules from them, and they usually take 2 weeks to reply by email.

They announced v6 as some major update and I don’t see anything that even considers calling that a major upgrade, all they did is just improve the user interface which takes a week for a one-person designer, not months.

I will move to Craft or just anything else open source because it seems Expression Engine is abandonware software now.

Almost none of their add-ons or plugins even work now, and I don’t refer to third party stuff but the ones that officially come with their software and are even in their own documentation. Sad…but I think it’s time to move…

And if they think this simple API is not important, they seriously imagine that a simple white box in my web browser can replace a full text editor designed for better writing like Office Word? Writing proper content is the most important thing on a CMS or website today. If I cannot use Word or another software which is specially designed for writing with my website, the whole value of the product is just poor because if I want a fancy WYSIWYG editor, other products do a far better job at this. I write tutorials and not being able to use my tools just destroys my productivity when I need to copy and paste everything into EE because the API is not working.

Just an update regarding Metaweblog API. Unless something major happens in testing that prevents it from happening, the fix to Metaweblog API will be fixed in 6.1. Here’s the PR if you want to pull down and test on your own installs. https://github.com/ExpressionEngine/ExpressionEngine/pull/1002

Thank you Andy. I will test this out. This might sound like a minor feature but its important for any blog por CMS content site and people that write content from different softwares or their prefered editors.