If you have been reading elsua for quite some time now you would know that in most cases I am actually making use of different third party weblogging tools in order to share content. So far my favourite one is w.bloggar although Qumana comes pretty close, too, in the second place. Indeed, I have been weblogging about Qumana quite a few times and although I stopped using it for some time because of the fact that it was not validating its content as well as I thought I have always been following further developments on the software itself hoping that it would improve even more over time.
That is why when I saw this morning the weblog post from Neville Hobson on NevOn about� QumanaXP Public Beta Launched I just couldn’t help resist the temptation of downloading it and playing around with it. Neville is reporting some good reviews:
“The latest beta 3.0.0-b1 reflects some serious development work over previous betas – they do listen to the testers – and shows a strong commitment by Qumana to produce a reliable tool for blogging that will stand up well against the competition”.
So I just couldn’t wait any longer and I went ahead, downloaded, installed the software and the good fun just got started. Indeed, I am creating this weblog post from the new QumanaXP beta and I must say that it is a true delight. If sharing content collaboratively on the web can be as easy as this then we are off to a good start for sure. I mean, I am here posting this weblog post on to my WordPress weblog, elsua, and everything is going like a charm. It was set up in no time, it grabbed all of the previous posts, I could also see the list of categories I could choose from. I could add Trackbacks (We will see if they would work with Neville’s weblog post) and I could add the usual Technorati tags as easy as usual. And it all seems to be pretty slick so far.
There are lots of different features that I like, such as the Source View (One of the reasons why I like w.bloggar so much), or the Spellcheck as you type; of course, the WYSISYG editor, some more additional User Preferences, like adding additional ping services, the inserting of ads, although I haven’t tested that out just yet as well as I should but it will come and so forth, but if I would need to choose one feature over all of the others as to why QumanaXP would become my default weblogging tool is its use of use .Indeed, sharing content in a weblog will not get any easier than this, I tell you. At least, I am not going through an ordeal in order to publish this weblog post. On the contrary, it is a real pleasure and quite an smooth experience.
However, not everything is just going to be perfect, like usual, I guess. Perhaps the only improvement that I could think of with QumanaXP is with regards to the excellent Blog Manager option from where you can manage all of your different weblogs and their corresponding posts. As I said QumanaXP seems to be working just fine with WordPress. However, I cannot say the same thing about other popular Open Source weblogging engines, like Roller Weblogger. Apparently, this beta version seems to struggling setting up my Intranet weblog using Roller. I know it is not listed as one of the engines, but that is why we have got over there the MetaWebLog API in order to set it up. And that is exactly what I am using. However, after it grabs all of the different settings, including the name of the weblog and so forth and I am given the option to click on Finish I do so and it hangs there forever. It looks like QumanaXP seems to struggle to detect the categories and grab those different weblog posts, because I just cannot it get to work and I have been forced to end the task twice already.
I am not sure how I am going to be able to fix this one issue, but I do seriously hope that I get it sorted it out because if I do manage to solve it QumanaXP will become, no doubt, become my default weblogging tool (Hoping that validating has improved as well quite a bit). So far I am liking and enjoying what I see. Some serious effort has gone into improving the tool and I am glad they have done so, because now, and thanks to it, people would not have any excuse any longer to share content in their weblogs in an inexpensive, user friendly, featured packed manner and very powerful weblogging tool ! Well done, folks! A really fine piece of software ! Keep up the good work while it is on Beta because we surely are going to enjoy the experience !
Tags: Metablogging, Qumana, QumanaXP, w.bloggar, WordPress, RollerWeblogger
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Luis, the trackback worked!
Really appreciate you comin’ on back to Qumana to retry the new beta. You’ve always given us such amazing feedback. I am very hopeful we can work out a better solution for Roller and hope you continue to enjoy the experience!
Definitely you hit the nail on the head – we really want to make blogging so easy that it becomes about the content, and sharing that content – not the technology 🙂
Thanks very much, folks, for sharing your feedback comments ! Neville, welcome to elsua ! Thanks for confirming that the Trackback worked out all right. I am glad to hear about that since that is one of the main methods I use whenever I want to keep track of the conversations directly in my weblog. Thanks again for dropping by and for confirming it.
Thanks again to Arieanna for sharing your feedback on the subject. I am actually enjoying the experience with the new beta quite a lot and have switched my external weblog elsua to it, once again. However, I still have got the issues with Roller and I am not sure if it is just a problem with the weblogging engine or with QumanaXP itself. I will have to check it out with the latest weblogging engine for Roller and see if that would work. If it does, I think I have got the perfect opportunity to use this weblogging software as my default weblogging software for my weblogs. We shall see how that goes.
And regarding your other comments about focusing on just sharing content as opposed to all of the different technicalities that is exactly, I agree, what weblogging should be about. Non tech savvy folks would now have a solid option for sharing knowledge and information in such a manner that they can just focus on the content itself as opposed to everything else. Really nice and very much worth while pursuing. And the fact that you folks are already taking care of this even while we are still on a beta release it is a good thing because we can expect some more improvements over time. Good stuff ! Again appreciated all the feedback comments !