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Using Windows Live Writer with MonoX

05/02/2012Categories: MonoX

Introduction

Microsoft Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application (it is a part of the Windows Live Essentials 2011 package) that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using numerous blog services. It features true offline WYSIWYG blog authoring and photo/map publishing.  This tool greatly helps in creating and publishing blogs because it provides many powerful features that are often not available in its browser-based counterparts, including spell checking and offline storage.

Windows Live Writer is a proud member of the group of offline blog editors like BlogDesk, Qumana, MarsEdit and Ecto. You can read more about them in the following article: Top 5 Offline Blog Editors.

How to configure Windows Live Writer for MonoX

MonoX fully supports Windows Live Writer and other similar editing tools that recognize standard MetaWeblog API.

  1. Start the application and click “Next” on the “Configure Windows Live Writer” screen:

    Configure Windows Live Writer
  2. Choose “Other services” when asked “What blog service do you use?”     

    What blog service do you use?
  3. When asked to “Add a blog account” you need to enter :
    - the web address of your blog: http://hostname/Blog/posts/blogname (e.g. http://www.mono-software.com/Blog/posts/Mono/ )
    - user name and password for your MonoX account 

    Add a blog account
  4. After Windows Live Writer sets up your account, you need  to choose a blog type and enter the posting endpoint for your blog.
  5. - MonoX supports MetaWeblog API standard so you need to choose Metaweblog API
    - enter http://hostname/MetaWeblog.ashx for the remote posting Web address (e.g. http://www.mono-software.com/MetaWeblog.ashx)

    Select blog type
  6. In the confirmation box for the “Download Blog Theme” click "No"

    Download Blog Theme 
  7. If everything is OK you’ll get the following screen where you can enter the nickname for your blog and click the Finish button to complete the configuration process.

    Your blog has been set up

 

How to publish a new blog post in Windows Live Writer

Text

As soon as you open a new post, you will notice the Enter the title section in which you should type the post title. Your main post content can be formatted by using some of the common tools that are displayed in the Home ribbon menu. You can also format titles and subtitles using the styles available in the HTML Styles section.

Windows Live Writer ribbon

Images

Live Writer allows its users to easily add various media content, such as individual files, photo albums, videos,maps, etc.

To insert a picture, select image content in the Insert ribbon menu of the Media section. This opens the possibility to choose images from your computer or images that are publicly available on the web. If a local image is choosen, it will open the Insert Picture dialog box.

Insert image
If you decide to insert an image that is already available on the Internet, you need to know its exact URL.

You can also just paste the image from the clipboard to your article.

After insertion, the image can be transformed and modified. First, highlight it and then open the corresponding Picture Tools ribbon. You will find tools for adjusting the image size, rotation, style, image alignment, setting margins, image size, etc.

Image formating

 Plug-in Options

If you need more advanced features for article formatting you can search for them in the library of Windows Live Writer Plug-ins. To search the available plug-ins click on the Insert  > Add plug-in. After the installation, your plug-in is available in the box next to the Add plug-in option.

image

I’ll demonstrate how to use the Code Snippet plug-in. When you click on the Code Snippet plug-in you’ll get a pop-up where you can place your code in the top area and get the preview in the bottom part of that section. You can choose the format of your code (e.g. C#, HTML, JavaScript,…) and play with other formatting options.

Code Snippet  

After you are satisfied with the layout of your code just click the Insert button and code will be inserted to your post.

image

Save/Post the draft

If you didn't complete the article you can save the draft of your article on your local computer, but you can also post this draft to your blog and continue to work on it from another computer.

image

When you are done with your article, you can click on the Publish menu option and it will be published to your blog and available to your visitors.

image

How to open and edit the article with Windows Live Writer

1. Open the local draft (version from your local computer) by choosing Open local draft option.

image


2. Open the the recently posted article by choosing the option Recently posted.

image


3. Open the posted article from your blog account.

image

This was only a short introduction to Windows Live Writer - it has a lot of others options we will describe in some of the articles to follow.

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