How-To Tuesday: Write in Windows Live Writer

With my review of the program now written, I decided to show you just how easy it can be to write a post in Windows Live Writer.

First things first, open the pro gram and select the blog you wish to work in.

Begin writing the post. You will need to know a couple things to be able to format it the way you want. To get a new line you have to hit Enter while holding the Shift key (a little annoying but you get used to it pretty quickly). The reason for this is because just hitting enter gives you a break – this will separate text from an image so that it is all one giant link.
When you get to a point where you want an image in it, simply find it on the computer and drag it into the program (you can also click insert on the right hand side and follow the prompts, but dragging it is easier and faster in my opinion).

Place the image where you want it in the post and then select your style, etc on the right hand side (must have the image selected for the options to appear). I usually choose Text Wrapping of Centered, Borders of Inherit from Blog in the Picture tab and then under the Advanced tab, Medium for my Photography blog and Small for this blog. It is under the Advanced tab that you can edit your image as well, if you haven't done so already.

Once you have your images in the post and your writing is done, you can set up your tags. Clicking on the Set Categories bar at the bottom will bring up a list of your existing tags. Either scroll through the list and select the ones you want, or start typing and then hit enter as the list shortens based on your entry. Once you are done, click out of the list and your tags will be ready to go. If you want a new tag, simply write it in the box and click add.

Once you are done, you can either save the post as a draft or publish it directly to your blog using the buttons on the top left hand side, right under the normal file, edit, view, etc options. To schedule the post to publish later, select the date and time in the bottom right hand corner and then publish it.
You can also insert videos, albums and tables into posts. Either click the items in the right hand side, or drag the item (for the case of videos) into the post itself. For albums, you can once again use the list on the right hand side, or drag multiple photos at once into the post. Live Writer will prompt you asking if you want to insert them as individual photos or as an album.
It really is just that easy. Hope that helped.

Windows Live Writer Part 2

A while back I posted about Windows Live Writer and how I was going to be trying it out for a little while. Well a little while has passed and pretty much all of my posts have been done through this program since I installed it on my computer. I have learned basically how it works and have even updated my templates since installing it – so I think I have a pretty good feel of the program and am therefore able to make a proper review of it.
My favourite thing about it is that i can easily switch between my blogs. You see, normally when I create posts I do so on all three of my blogs and will post several scheduled ones as well. This is really easy with Windows Live Writer. I just click and boom I have switched from Great Abyss to Stephanie Beach Photography. If I start writing a post in the wrong blog I click again and it switches to the right one without losing any of the information.
Now onto the images. I had heard from other Photographic Bloggers that this program was really good for places images in your posts and enabling you to make them whatever size you wanted. Though this last part is correct (you are no longer bound by the three options that blogger gives you when uploading images), I find that I can no longer use my regular Photography format of an image with centred writing below it. I have since dealt with this as it is easier to size them and significantly easier and faster to upload them. You can simply drag them from a folder over to the post in Windows Live Writer and presto – the image is in the post.
The program also downloads your template and enables you to see exactly how the post will sit in it. You can tell if the words are breaking properly around your image, or if there is a line with just one silly little word on it. It keeps your font and styles too so you can see if that link looks right or if the italicized words are going to be published correctly.

I do most of my posting from home and have therefore not used the remote access features, but I am told they are there and you can use Windows Live Writer from work or a public space without much additional effort.
Things I don’t really like about this program is the recently posted list and the lack of a scheduled post list. Don’t get me wrong, you can do scheduled posts, but you can’t see the list of upcoming posts – so I am still going into blogger to see if posts are scheduled for x day or y time. The list of recently posted is quite short and for me, lists posts from all my blogs not just the one I am currently working in. The tags for you posts are still there and link to the ones in blogger, but they aren’t as fast to insert as you have to check each one you want instead of starting the word and then hitting enter like I used to in blogger.
Even with the aforementioned cons, I am continuing to use this program and would suggest to almost any of my blogger friends, that they try it out too.

If you are interested in using the program, first consider how you blog. If you insert a great deal of images or want to know exactly how the post is going to look before you publish it, then it may be worth your while. If your posts are more or less just words (ie. no images, videos, etc) then the normal blogger or wordpress modules may be good enough for you. Hope this has helped.

Windows Live Writer

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have downloaded a new program that claims to make blogging easier and more straightforward. It is called Windows Live Writer and I am currently testing it out. I have allowed it to access my blogs to gather the necessary information to properly format my posts, but for now am just testing it out here.

It seems a little odd and quite frankly I am not all that impressed so far, but I have just installed it a few minutes ago and this is my first post, so perhaps the program and I just need some time to get used to one another.

I will be trying a few things with it over the next couple days, like scheduled posts and posts in the past. It claims to be able to better edit posts and more easily insert photos, albums and videos so I will need to try all of those things out before I can make a proper review of the program, though I have heard good things from other bloggers, particularly photographic bloggers (as you can supposedly more easily edit the size of your images).

Anyway, just thought I would let you all know what I was up to, just in case my posts look a little odd for the next little while. I am going to be getting back to my Florida posts, I think the past few days acted as a good break, but I have many more places to tell you about before I am done with that vacation.