Hello. In my quest to build a site that has blogging capabilities, I am searching a blogging service. Please note that I am not interested in installing something like wordpress in-premise. I am looking for a service which will provide me with APIs to read and write blogs and be responsible for persistence and performance. Needless to say, it should be adequately secure and should be scalable. Any pointers will be appreciated.
Thanks friend. Yes, I looked into Google APIs for that. However, invariably it would require authentication with Google. I can create some parallel accounts on Google also but I am not sure if the blogs persisting on Blogger will be private (I mean they will be public on Blogger site, besides mine).BTW, do you have any examples where such an arrangement is being exercised?
Kabeer
2009-12-10 20:37:50
No matter what service you end up using (MetaWeblog API, or Google's APIs), there is a good bit of code required to implement either strategy. There are no out-of-box examples. Well, come to think about it, there is: Wordpress or any other blogging framework you can download and host.
eduncan911
2009-12-10 22:36:10
+1
A:
WordPress (and almost all other blogging sites) have what is called a MetaWeblog API built in. Dozens of applications out there are written to use it. Such as Windows Live Writer (my favorite).
Even Microsoft Word has built-in support for the Metablog API calls (File -> Post to Weblog).
Now, if you want a service to truly host your entire blog backend, while you write a frontend (aggregate listings, pagings, searching, etc), you'll be hard pressed to find an inexpensive service to support that. Many applications have been created for that purpose, with a hefty price tag.
eduncan911
2009-12-10 20:23:50
Thanks. Yes, funds wise, I have challenges, else I would go for an on-premise deployment (WP or BlogEngine.Net). Do you know of examples where Metablog API calls are being used?
Kabeer
2009-12-10 20:41:02
Examples of where MetaWeblog API calls are being used? Download Windows Live Messenger, or if you have Microsoft Word it has it built-in as well (Publish to Weblog option when Saving). Online examples are less known. Here's Wordpress' link: http://codex.wordpress.org/XML-RPC_Support
eduncan911
2009-12-10 22:33:06
Also note that MetaWeblog APIs are only for Posting. There is limited support for "read" which basically lets you read the one post that you are attempting to edit (via a url or ID that was used previously).
eduncan911
2009-12-10 22:33:56
+1
A:
Pretty much every blogging package supports the MetaWeblog API or some alternative. If you are happy with whatever services a particular hosted provider has (WordPress hosting companies exist, for example), then your app or your users' favorite blogging tool can call the metaweblog api and you're done. Movable Type also has a similar API.
Edited to add: I'm slightly behind the times because I just learned about it, but AtomPub is making pretty good headway in the blogging API mindshare battle.
If what you actually want is an api to support blog provisioning, I am less certain of your options, but I suspect that many hosted services would be willing to expose something if you provided enough financial incentive.
JasonTrue
2009-12-10 20:28:15
Alas, I started writing my post before I saw yours... If I had known, I would have just edited your post to have a link to the Metaweblog api and perhaps added a comment about Movable Type. Instead, I upvoted your answer :)
JasonTrue
2009-12-10 22:59:49