Setting Up Windows Live Writer With Your WordPress Blog

I’ve been writing for numerous blogs for a while now. And it’s the same thing every time, I have to log in to the blogging system (Blogger for example), pick the right blog I write for, add a new post and remember how to use the particular editing interface. It’s the same with WordPress, LiveJournal, and all the other services. And it’s especially true for self-hosted blogs where you can’t log into one place to access several blogs (as is possible in Blogger).

Now, there are a lot of blogging clients that make that a breeze. What I will focus on today, will be setting up the Windows Live Writer (Windows Only, obviously). Here is what I will cover:

• Downloading and installing Windows Live Writer
• Setting up the Writer with your self-hosted WordPress Blog
• A sample blog post

Windows Live Essentials

The first thing you need to do is download the Windows Live Essentials.

Save the file and run it. It’s not a large file, it’s an installer that will download all the different Live Tools you wish to use.

As you can see it will show you what you already installed and what programs you can still install. I already have the Writer, so I’ll install Mail as a demonstration of how this works. Check of what you want, and press install. The installer will check if you need to close any applications to continue the installation, like this:

Close the programs, and the installer will download and install the applications you selected. It may take a while if you chose all of them but it should be rather quick if you chose only the Live Writer. Also, in my case, the installer may re-download some applications to update them.

Adjusting your Blog

This is the easy part, you just have to check out an option. While in the dashboard of your WordPress blog (self-hosted only) look through the panes on the left and click on Settings>Writing:

You’ll get to the Writing Settings Page, scroll down to Remote Publishing and check off “XML-RPC”:

There, and you’re done. Let’s set up our Windows Live Writer.

Setting up Windows Live Writer

Go ahead and open up the Writer, it’ll be in your start menu. You’ll get a configuration dialog, just click through it and mark the options I have:

Windows Live Writer can connect to various service, even create a new blog. Click off “Other blog service”.

Type in the web address to your blog. Obviously enough, you can type in the web address of any of your favorite blogs (Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.), TYPE THE WHOLE URL! Type in your username and password. I recommend using the “remember password” option.

Next, WLW will ask you if you want a post posted on your blog to detect the theme settings (this will help in writing and editing articles):

Check off “yes”. You may encounter an error like this:

There’s nothing you can do about that. Your theme may just be too complex for WLW to download and use. However, I have connected a single blog to two different Writers (on two separate systems) and have gotten mixed results. If you want to try again, do so after finishing setting up, go to the next page of this blog post, the guide is there.

Okay, next choose the name of your blog (under which you will access it on WLW):I was setting up WLW for my blog Rising Spirit and the program automatically recognized the name of my blog despite the URL mismatch (the URL is : http://www.perfectlifetoday.com but the blog is named Rising Spirit). Click finish and this is what you should get:

Depending on your theme, and if WLW correctly downloaded your theme, this page may look different. And you’re finished!

Sample Post

Just start typing, As you can see, you have categories and tags on the bottom. You can set a publish date and do a lot of crazy things. Here is my typed-up post in the “edit” window:

“preview” window:

“Source” window:

Press “Publish” and WLW will publish the post and automatically load the blog page in your browser. Go see my blog post in its final version online, and you’ll see that it looks almost exactly how it does on WLW.

I hope all this helped Go to the second page to see the guide on refreshing the theme!