Blog Software: Zoundry – Blog Writing and Publishing for Profits – Part 1

Blog Software: Zoundry – Blog Writing and Publishing for Profits – Part 1
Introducing Zoundry. A recent entry into the blog software tools of blog writing and editing. Yet Zoundry isn’t just another blog software editing and writing tool. Zoundry is also and affiliate service that attempts to bring blog publishing and affiliate marketing together into a cooperative publishing for profits solution that I’ve not quite seen before.

With that said and to repeat…Zoundry is both and blog writing software tool and Zoundry is also a service. By the website copy they are first and foremost a service.

Zoundry As A Blog Writing Tool

Zoundry Blog Writer is currently and windows only tool with plans to develop and Mac and Linux version based on demand and user feedback.

As a blog writing tool, Zoundry Blog Writing is easy to use with a pleasant interface that allows any publisher to get started without much need for a help file. For the most part it is a pretty straightforward and typical software installation experience.

I found Zoundry Blog Writer rather brilliant in some spots because of simplicity of design and effectiveness of useful features such as multiple tags services and post management but fell short in areas of content export/backup and basic content editing considerations.

One question I had as I read the copy for this tool before using was whether or not this tool was just the means the end for Zoundry. In other words, would the tool fall short because of a focus on the Zoundry affiliate service or would the Zoundry Blog Editor be a fresh entry into the blog software arena bringing a solution that understands the needs of blog publishers.

Let’s find out.

Getting Started with Zoundry Blog Writer

Installation is a snap. Just run the downloaded Windows .exe file and step through and standard Windows installation. Once you launch the program using the program icon you are presented with the Zoundry Blog Writer editor interface as seen in Figure 1 below.

Set Up and Configuration

Figure 1. The Zoundry Interface

2. Set Up your blog

Launching Zoundry User Settings Wizard kicks off the Account Wizard. Go to ‘Blog Accounts’ click ‘New Account’ and ‘New Blog Account’ wizard starts

Figure 2. The Zoundry Blog Account Wizard Interface

3. Enter Account Details

Figure 3. Entering Account Details

4. Confirm settings. Detection of Upload support.

Figure 4. Discovery and Confirmation of Account Configuration

5. Finished

Figure 5. The Zoundry User Settings Interface

6. Custom Directory for uploaded media? use FTP config and confirm Settings

Figure 6. The Zoundry Interface – Configuring FTP/Media Repository

Figure 6a. Zoundry Tests FTP Settings

Writing and Publishing


Figure 7. Selecting Your Blog – Multiple Blog Accounts Supported

Figure 8. Support for Categories


Figure 9. Support for Multiple Tagging Services


Figure 10. Support for Blog Templates

Content Editing and Management

Zoundry supports downloading posts from your server, editing and then republishing articles. Great time saver of course and a nice necessary component for the busy blog publisher. I think it could be a bit more intuitive or perhaps I’m just to exacting here.

You access the POST menu and then select Download Recent Posts. You can select the most recent 1-150 posts. Once downloaded however it isn’t really clear how to access them. After some clicking I discovered that big orange folder icon whose tool tip says ‘Open Entry’ is the way to access these previous AND your saved content that hasn’t been published yet. That icon is rather non-descript but most windows user would eventually click it anyway because it just screams of Windows File Explorer.

Once opened, your previous posts are there clearly label with Title, Date Modified, Date Posted, Blog (which blog the post is published to) and Status (published or unpublished-local machine).

I also think the in-context right-click menu is well excecuted. It focused mainly on linking in general and link to products. This tool truly makes affiliate marketing a time efficient exercise.

Posting to the Future

I’m not sure if the posting to the future is an auto detect feature or not. I configured Zoundry to work with my account here at BlogHarbor and over at TypePad, both of which support ’scheduled posting to the future’. Since the software did a good job of detecting if the support for FTP uploads I figured it might be in play here to. Let me know if you find this is not the case.

Blog This URL

This is one of the weaker spots in the software. If you want to blog a URL you can to copy that URL to the clipboard and then from with Zoundry access the FILE menu to access the Blog This URL option which opens a dialog box to paste your URL into. When completed however, Zoundry does of good job of autodiscovering the TrackBack URL if available.

In cases where you may want to link to but not trackback someone’s content you may be able to avoid that by manual insertion of the URL as you normally would as Zoundry doesn’t seem to offer a option to turn trackback autodiscovery on or off other than not using the Blog This URL feature or the TrackBack dialog box the is ever present in the UI of this editor.

In that case I would assume it works like other blog writers I’ve used in the past that don’t support trackback and that is leave it to the blog software application. BlogHarbor allows you to turn trackbacking and autodiscovery of trackbacks for links in content you publish either on or off and on a per post basis. Some editors that don’t support trackback have not always support your server settings either when you have autodiscovery turned on for your server software and which you published that article from the blog editor instead of the web-based editor available with all blog software installed on any server whether it’s your own or with and blog hosting service.

SideBar of Champions

While finding where all those posts went that I downloaded wasn’t immediately apparent (okay, it took me about 3 seconds to figure it out), the sidebar does a super job of allowing you to manage your entries.

From the VIEW menu you access the SIDEBAR menu where you have 3 o
ptions: Getting Started, Check for Updates and Blog Entries.

Getting Started clever outlines the setup and use of Zoundry and a series of easy steps to follow make it very easy for novice blog publishers to use this tool right out of the gate. I like the fact that Zoundry isn’t complicated to configure and doesn’t overwhelm you with detailed options.

Check for Updates is a feature I covered in a previous section of this post but is easily accessible from the sidebar.

Blog Entries is the heavy hitter here. You can only populate your blog entries area by either composing an article/post and saving it as unpublished content on your local machine before publishing or by the Download Recent Post as I discussed above.

When viewing your blog entries from the sidebar you can view your entries by Account, by Tags or by Links. I find this extremely powerful and highly effective in its historical capacity as well as it’s useful as a content and resource organization tool. You can easily identify clusters of information, articles and topics depending on the filter you use. You have to try this in order to fully appreciate what I’m talking about here.

Now, when you select any recent post entry or saved entry in the sidebar you also activate five smaller icons specifically associated with the sidebar entries. They are:

Open for Editing: Allows you to edit the post you downloaded or the post you’ve saved as local.

View Post Online: Launches a browser session taking you to the specific entry you have selected. You can only select one entry at a time.

Create A Link To This Post: This is great! If you are composing content and you want to easily link to a previous post you’ve already published in you blog you can simple select that entry, click this button and Zoundry inserts a link to that article into the post you are current composing. It will use your previous post subject line and the linked text and of course you can only link to the previous post from here if you have it already downloaded in Zoundry as a Recent Post Entry. Great time saver!

Properties: Launches and dialog with tabbed information about a specific recent post entry (General, Links, Media). Great way to get summary content and properties about and post and you can also insert the link to this post and view the post online from this dialog box as well.

Delete Post: Obvious. Don’t want it? Push this button to delete a recent post or saved post.

In Part 2 of this review I will talk about Zoundry as a service and sum up my opinion of this tool.

Posted in Professional Blogging