(this blog entry is a note-to-self kind of a thing.)

I've been using a cool Firefox browser extension called ScribeFire to write my blog entries; I like it because it's easy to write the blog entry without having to worry about writing HTML markup, and it makes it easy for you to post the blog entry to just about any kind of blogging software you want.  I usually write to my blogs.sun.com blog, which runs the Roller blogging software.

That's all good, but recently I couldn't post new blog entries with ScribeFire and I couldn't figure out why.  I'd go back into the Account Wizard, where you tell ScribeFire about your blog, including username and password.  But it kept failing on my username and password, and I was absolutely sure I had those correct.

Well, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.  This will certainly apply to Sun employees but it may apply to others out there using Roller blogging servers.  Here's what I needed to do:

• Log into blogs.sun.com (my blogging site); recently, we switched our authentication mechanism to something all Sun employees know.
• under the "Actions" section there is a choice labeled "Edit user profile"; click on that.
• Choose a "Weblog Client API Password", which is different from the password you used to log into blogs.sun.com.  This password is what ScribeFire will use when it tries to post a blog entry for you, so you need to tell blogs.sun.com what to expect for a password.  Confirm the password and save.

There you go.  Now you can go into ScribeFire and update your settings.  Here's how I set mine:

• Open ScribeFire and click on the "Add" button under the Blogs tab; this launches the ScribeFire Account Wizard;
  
• my blog's url is "http://blogs.sun.com/drapeau"; enter yours and Continue;
• Click the Configure Manually button that appears next;
• Select "MetaWeblog API" as the blog system type (I don't know why not "Roller"; just trust me here);
• for the API URL, type "http://blogs.sun.com/roller-services/xmlrpc";
• for the Username and Password, use your username and the password you entered as the Weblog Client API Password above;

That should do it.  Now you can blog with Scribefire, which should make blogging easier and more fun overall.

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