To put it simply, Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is absolutely the business. If you’re using Windows XP or Vista as your operating system (no Macs), you need to give this blog software a try. It’s a free download from Microsoft.
This video shows you everything you need to know about how to use Windows Live Writer blog software to write posts on your blog. If you can’t watch it in your email or reader, watch it on Viddler or the blog.
Windows Live Writer Features
- Works with any popular bogging platform (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad) and even some not-so-popular platforms (Microsoft) :), which saves you from dealing with the quirks of multiple platforms.
- Write posts, pages, create categories/labels, and insert pictures for multiple blogs from one application, which saves you a lot of time. Like, I couldn’t possibly overdo this point, so I’ll just leave it at that.
- Can have more than one copy of Windows Live Writer open at the same time, which makes it easy to copy from one window and paste into another.
- Image uploading is a joy instead of a nightmare, and this alone would make the software worth paying for, but it’s free.
- You get cool stuff like picture special effects and easy video embedding.
- You can reuse links by adding them into the link glossary, which saves tons of time.
- You can download and install extensions that enhance and extend the functionality of Windows Live Writer.
One word of warning: Microsoft is Microsoft, after all, and they treat this program like bait. They will try to get you to sign up for or download other Microsoft Live services and stuff you probably don’t want. So be careful: read the prompts carefully and make sure you know what you’re agreeing to and downloading. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s easy to not pay close enough attention to what you’re doing. I’m very happy with this software, and I use it daily. It saves me huge amounts of time and makes my in-post pictures look great.
WordPress tags: To create WordPress tags, click on the little double arrows to expand the category/publish date bar at the bottom. In the expanded area, you’ll see a field for “keywords.” That’s where you can put tags for a WordPress blog (comma separated).
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Michael Martine, Remarkablogger
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26 Comments
Nice post Michael, and a good review of WLW.
I have continued to use it even after switching to a Mac (thanks to VMware Fusion) - it really is a good program and you can’t beat the price
-Brett
@Brett - Now THAT’S loyalty!
I thought you’d get a kick out of that! It really is a good program - Microsoft does do some great stuff - and I always figure “use the best tool for the job”.
@Brett - Yup. I love Office 2007, but Vista… not so much!
@Michael,
Funny, I was just going to say that I use Office 2007 via Fusion as well - I already had it, and it was less expensive to run via Fusion than to buy Office 2008 for Mac - plus there’s more stuff in O2k7.
@Brett - I saw a screenshot of Word 2k7 for Mac, and it was a big jumbled-up mess of a program.
@Michael,
I suppose one would get used to it eventually - I figured since I was used to 2k7 already on Windows, and since it has more applications and features (and since I already owned it!), I’d just stick with it. Fusion’s Unity mode is good and you don’t even have to see the VM - just your app, seamlessly integrated into the background.
Hi Michael,
I have a blog on Wordpress 2.3 and I don’t see the keywords text box in the Properties window. When I checked the blog properties (from Weblog / Edit setting / View Capabilities) it shows that the blog doesn’t support keywords. In fact version 2.3 supports tags, so my question is: do you know whether I should check som settings in my blog or I should upgrade it to a later version?
I personally don’t like much 2.5 and later administrative interface but I can cansider upgrading to the latest version of wordpress if necessary.
Thanks!
Mike
WLW is top notch! But it’ll be better if it allows us enter the custom fields directly
@Mike - You need to upgrade for security reasons alone, regardless of anything else. Older version of WordPress are vulnerable to attack.
If tags do not normally display in your theme, then they will not appear in WLW either. If your theme predates WP tags in their current incarnation, WLW will not show the keywords field.
@Louis - Yup. I agree. There are many plug-ins available, though, so try checking them from the link above in the post.
I’ve used Live Writer this summer when I was crewing for a 3,000 mile bike race where the racers were on the bike 20+ hours a day. We were in the middle of nowhere a lot of the time. I was using a T-mobile PC card for internet access. As we were going down the road, the connection would come and go. I was posting a large number of pictures and LiveWriter got them all posted even though I’m sure it had to be retransmitting several of them. If I had been posting directly, it would have been impossible.
@Rob - that’s a great story for all kinds of reasons, not just the role WLW plays in it. Really cool to be blogging from the road like that.
I am very delighted and impressed with the product. I switched to WLW after using Picasa as a blogging editor to upload my pictures to my food blog on Blogger. But I was always hampered by the 4 picture per post upload limit in Picasa. With WLW, I can upload numerous pictures, easily resize them and add ALT text, and also easily add Title tags to links. My food blog now has so many more yummy pics than before!
If you look around the Interweb, you can find standalone WLW installers so that you don’t have to deal with installing the other Windows Live services/applications that you don’t want.
@Nate - Thanks for sharing your story and the helpful tip about installers. Be careful when downloading anything from Microsoft from a non-Microsoft site! Only download software from trustworthy sources!
Thanks again Michael. Another great tip. I LOVE being able to post to both blogs I write if I want. Ease and efficiency are a great combination.
@Leona - You’re very welcome. I love being able to post to multiple blogs from the same application window. Makes a blogger’s life easier!
Funny, I tried WLW yesterday before reading this post. It’s far quicker and more practical than using the different blog platform built-in editors, and I like being able to use if off-line.
The ease of inserting links to existing posts is my favourite feature. It would be even nicer if the list of posts was cached. It seems to have to download it every time.
@Gary - Offline composition is a favorite feature of mine, too. Although for those using WordPress’ native web interface, it’s possible to work offline with the “Turbo” feature, which uses Google Gears.
Hi Michael, thanks for this post. Yesterday I tried to sign-up and download Windows Live Writer but my e-mail verification never went through. Anywho, I decided to run a search and found that Live Writer was already on my computer. I opened it up and set it up. There was some type of error loading it but anyway, I’m going to try it out today.
I’ll let you know how I like it.
@Valerie - Great! I think you’ll find it pretty easy to use. I find myself wishing it did some of the things Word does, but it’s still a great application.
Hi Michael, my copy is not working correctly, script errors. I think I’m going to uninstall it and start over.
Valerie, you’ll probably have better success with our new beta. We fixed some “script error” related bugs.
http://download.live.com/writer
If that doesn’t help, feel free to shoot me an e-mail at joe.cheng *AT* microsoft.com.
Thanks for the post, Michael!
Mike Ramm–upgrading to WP 2.3.1 or later will make tags show up in WLW. But Michael is right, for security’s sake it’s a wise idea to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
@Joe - Thanks for coming by and helping out. Nice to see someone from Microsoft is keeping an eye on the conversation and who cares.
I’m not sure you’re 100% correct about upgrading WordPress to or past 2.3.1, though. I’m running 2.6.2 and I have the keyword/tag capability for all my blogs except Remarkablogger… which happens to be running a theme that never displays tags. So if I’m missing some important piece of information, please let me know what it is, but that’s what I see from where I’m standing.
PS - I’ll give the new beta a try!
Michael-
WLW uses a blog-specific wlwmanifest.xml file that ships with WordPress to tell us what options to turn on. It seems to be missing from your install. If you do a View Source on your blog homepage and do a Find for wlwmanifest, you’ll see that your blog is pointing here:
http://michaelmartine.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml
but that URL returns a 404. If you get that URL working, WLW should automatically pick it up and show the correct options.
@Joe - Thanks very much, Joe!
I will look into getting that manifest file correctly set up (must be the result of a manual upgrade I did a long time ago, or something–not sure what would cause that).
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