Writer Zone: Writer Tips

Writer Videos: Come and Get 'Em!

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:55:37 GMT

Instructional video demonstrations for how to use Windows Live Writer are now available. Check them out on Soapbox and YouTube!

1 – Getting Started

2 minutes, 26 seconds
This instructional video demonstration shows how to setup Windows Live Writer to work with your blog and, if you don't already have a blog, how to create a new blog on Windows Live.

2 - Basic Authoring

2 minutes, 16 seconds
This instructional video demonstration shows how to do basic authoring of a blog post using Windows Live Writer.

3 - Pictures, Videos, Maps and Plug-ins (oh my!)

5 minutes
This instructional video demonstration shows how to insert and edit rich content - like pictures, videos and maps - using Windows Live Writer.

4 – Open, Save, Publish and Help

2 minutes, 44 seconds
This instructional video demonstration shows how to open, save, print and publish blog posts using Windows Live Writer. You will also learn about how to get more information and send feedback to the Windows Live Writer team.

5 - Windows Live Writer

11 minutes
This is a single video that covers the all the same content in the videos listed above (1 - 4).

Enjoy!

Writer Tip: Working With Images

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:45:20 GMT

For those of you who frequently include images in your blog posts and find that you often apply the same settings, there is a convenient feature in Writer that enables you to save those settings as the defaults for all future images.

How it works

First, inset an image.
Then apply the settings to the image so it look the way you want (for example: change the text wrapping to "Right" and apply the "Photopaper" border).
Then click on the "Save settings as default" link at the bottom of the Image Properties sidebar (as shown on the right).

Now, the next time you insert an image it will be using the settings that you just saved following the steps above.

Settings that get saved

Not all settings get saved when you use this feature. Settings that will be saved are:

Text wrapping
Margins
Borders
Link to
Image size
Watermark effect

Defaults per blog account

The defaults are saved uniquely for each blog account. That means if you have Writer configured to multiple blog accounts you can specify settings for images that are unique to each account.

Revert to default settings

And for those of you who tend to get a little crazy formatting your images and take it a little to far, it's easy to wipe the slate clean and start over by clicking "Revert to default settings" at the bottom on the Image Properties sidebar. This will remove any changes that you've applied to the image and set it back to whatever the images defaults are for that account.

Get back to the defaults that came with Writer

If you changed the image setting defaults for your account and want to change them back to the defaults used by Writer do the following:

Set "Text wrapping" to "Left"
Set "Margins" to "No Margins"
Set "Borders" to "Drop Shadow"
Set "Link to" to "Source"
Set "Image size" to "Small"
Remove any watermark effects
Click "Save settings as default"

Writer Tip: Automatic Server Pinging

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:53:50 GMT

One of the less obvious features available in Windows Live Writer is the ability to automatically ping (send a signal) to popular blog aggregators every time you publish something to your blog. This feature actively pings the servers of the blog aggregators you specify and to indicate when there is new material.

To use this feature in Writer click on Ping Servers in the Options dialog (navigation: Tools | Options | Ping Servers). Then add the names of the servers you want to ping.

Some names of some popular search engines you could choose are:
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

You can also use a pinging service like Ping-o-Matic (this service will automatically ping a number of popular sites for you). Just put the following in the list of ping servers:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

You can get an extended list of ping servers from the Ping Server entry on Wikipedia and the Ping-o-Matic website.

A note on pinging etiquette: make sure to only ping specialized services if they're relevant to your blog, otherwise you'll cause an undue burden on them.

[edit: Moved Ping-o-matic into a separate section since it actually relays pings to various servers. Thanks for the suggestion, Joseph! ]

[edit: Corrected the NewsGator ping URL, which was incorrect.]