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Using Windows Live Writer with WordPress

June 7, 2009
Technology
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Windows Live Writer is a new, free software program provided by Microsoft. The caption on the download site says: “Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service—Windows Live, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and many more”.

“Splendid,” I thought. I’ve wanted to try Writer out, and I needed to write a new blog post as I haven’t been as faithful to my blog the past month as I’d have liked to have been. Also, as much as I like the web-based revolution, I don’t particularly find WordPress.com’s online article editor very good for much else other than writing plain-text. Inserting and uploading media is a bit of a chore, but as I found out, Writer makes that rather easy.

Without further ado, I’ll run you through the setup process here, and comment on my experiences as I go. For added authenticity, I’ll actually be writing this blog post using Live Writer. So, fingers crossed – the proof (should be) in the pudding.

Installation

Installation is straightforward, simple and easy. The Windows Live downloader includes the option to include other products within the Live suite too, including Windows Live Messenger and Movie Maker Beta.

Setup

When you run the program for the firs time, you’re asked which blogging service you use:

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You then need to fill out a few other details:

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And, that really is about all you need to do. Once you’ve done this, Live Writer connects to your blog, configures itself (correctly) and even downloads your blog’s CSS styles and gives you a live preview as you type.  So far, so good.

The Editor

As soon as you startup after configuring your blog account, you’ll see the new editor window. It’s blank, waiting for you to write your next masterpiece:

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Of particular interest here are the “Insert” links on the right-hand side of the screen:

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I’ve always found the WordPress.com web editor a bit, well, clumsy. It’s clear (for sure), it’s just fiddly if you want to do anything that write text. Uploading pictures is a bit of a pain. Using Writer, I’ve simply been taking screenshots and pasting directly in to the editor window.

Rich Media Integration

Writer boasts the ability to publish your videos directly to the MSN Soapbox service, or to YouTube and then embed those videos directly into your blog. This is a really nice feature, and to test if it works, I’m going to insert a sample video here:

 

EDIT: As you can see, WordPress.com doesn’t seem to like the player code generated via Windows Live Writer. I’ll write to them, and ask why – and if I get a response, I’ll post it here. Shame!

Clicking on the “Video” link under “Insert” menu:

I chose “Soapbox” (as this is a service I have never used). Thankfully, there’s no registration forms to fill out. I just enter my Windows Live ID and create a ‘nickname’ for my Soapbox account:

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… And that’s it. You’re then returned to the Live Writer editor and you can see your video uploading right in-place on your blog. Quite handy actually, because it meant I could carry on writing my article while the upload took place in the background.

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After about 15 minutes, my video had uploaded and Soapbox had finished processing my video. The “uploading video” screen above is now replaced with:

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Absolutely fantastic, so far then. So, let’s recap:

  • I’ve uploaded a video to a service I’ve never used
  • I didn’t have to prepare my video, I just found one and selected it
  • I could carry on writing my article while uploading in the background, with the video placeholder in-line
  • The video was uploaded and transcoded in around 15 minutes.

Very impressive. All I need now is some hyperlinks.

Hyperlinking

Ok, I’ve been building web pages since I was about 12. Hyperlinks are easy, right? Of course they are. But tell that to the WordPress.com editor. Linking to my previous posts has always been a pain because it doesn’t let me browse through them and pick them when creating a new link. I have to get my previous article URL and then cut and paste (somebody, please correct me if I’m wrong here – I really hope I’ve just missed this feature). Live Writer, though, does a great job:

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Choosing “Previous post” then pops up the following:

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Another awesome little helper-feature. Job done. Hyperlinks inserted. And I’m still in my nice WYSIWYG editor.

Summary

So, to finish up then, how would I summarise my experience using Windows Live Writer?

In a word, “brilliant”. In four words: “you should use it”.

It’s free, it’s very well built (as you’d expect), and it has a very polished interface. Microsoft have done a fantastic job here.

Windows Vista – RAM/Memory Page Faults

February 9, 2009
Windows Vista
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Some time ago, I saved all my pennies and purchased a then high-spec PC manufactured by Evesham Technology, a company that a short while ago went bankrupt. Unfortunately, things with the PC started to go a bit weird just after that. I first had to replace the motherboard, which had given up the ghost entirely. But recently, I had another problem.

Symptoms

  • Apparently random ‘frezzing’ of applications and system processes
  • Thousands of “Hard Faults” showing under the Memory section in Reliability and Performance Monitor

Cause

Enlisting the help of a friend, upon popping open the case, we found amongst the 4GB of RAM were two very cheap and nasty looking 1GB memory sticks mixed with two awesome-looking Crucial Memory sticks. The two sticks from each manufacturer had two different speeds – so on a whim we hoicked out the dodgy-looking brand, leaving only the 2GB from Crucial Memory.

A little surprisingly, this meant that the PC now boots in < 40 seconds (vs. ~120 seconds before) and Hard Faults per minute are right down:

Reliability and Performance Manager

So far, so good. My Vista Ultimate system is now running on 2GB RAM at approximately twice the speed of the previous 4GB installation. Depending on how the system operates over the next few days, I’ll purchase 2 x 1GB replacement sticks identical to the current Crucial sticks as a replacement to the dodgy-looking sticks.

Fingers-crossed!

How to install XP via a USB key on to your Acer Aspire A150

December 28, 2008
Netbooks, Projects
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I recently purchased an Acer Aspire A150 from Amazon.co.uk. At just under 200 pounds, it is probably one of the best buy netbooks on the market right now.

It comes in several varieties, but I opted for the 160gb / 1GB RAM version with Linpus Linux installed, knowing that I would install Vista or XP on it soon.

Having lived with the netbook for a week running Vista Business, it was just too slow (remember, I have the 1GB RAM version – Vista really needs a minimum of about 2GB to be ‘bearable’). So the obvious answer then, not particularly wanting to use a Linux distro, was to install Windows XP.

That wasn’t as easy as it perhaps could have been, I think it is fair to say; taking up most of the day researching yesterday. There are several versions of tutorials on the web, it’s fair to say not all of them are written perhaps as well as they could have been. The best one, by far, in my humble opinion, was the one on the Acer Aspire One User Forums. This is an ‘unoffical’ community for Aspire One users, and the overall site is brilliant.

Before you trundle over to the user forum, have a look at the list of software I recommend you download before you begin. This is in addition to the list provided in the Aspire User forum article, above:

Virtual CloneDrive is basically a utility that let’s you ‘mount’ an ISO file into a virtual CDROM drive. ISO Recorder lets you create the ISOs that you can load into Virtual CloneDrive. nLite is a very smart program that lets you customise your Windows XP installation media before you install it.

Important note: In order to put Windows XP on your Aspire One, you will need to customise the installation media using nLite and apply Service Pack 1. If you do not do this, you will not be able to even run the installer on your Aspire.

Follow the instructions contained in the article above, and remember to do things in this order:

  • Make an ISO of your Windows XP CD
  • Mount your Windows XP ISO using CloneDrive
  • Run nLite – and make sure you add “Service Pack 1″ (VITAL)
  • Save your ‘nLited’ version of Windows XP somewhere on your hard drive
  • Follow the instructions in the article to create your bootable USB memory stick
  • Copy the nLited version of Windows XP onto your USB key
  • Insert the USB key into your Acer Aspire One
  • Boot up your Aspire One, and press F12 to enter the boot menu.
  • Choose “USB Key” from the boot options.

Voila!

How to check your DNS records

September 2, 2008
Networks
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Checking DNS records is something that we sometimes have to do. Recently, when moving over to Google Apps for Your Domain, we had quite a few problems with email being delivered (apparently selectively) to our old mail servers, instead of to GMail. Enter IntoDNS.com, a fantastic resource – and free.

The ins and outs of DNS can sometimes get very complicated but this clever web site explains everything to you as it finds problems. Within seconds, IntoDNS.com had trawled through our DNS records and picked out the problem, and had suggested several ways to fix it, too.

Bravo. What a truly fantastic resource!

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