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Windows Live Writer Support

This page instructs users on how to add Windows Live Writer support to their Movable Type blog.

Please note that there are some limitations due to the features of Windows Live Writer. LaRosa Johnson submitted a list of limitations in a comment below.

Prerequisites

This feature requires that you have Movable Type 4.1 installed.

Instructions

  1. Install Windows Live Writer » Download Windows Live Writer

  2. Create and Publish a WLW Manifest File

    The WLW manifest file provides Windows Live Writer with the information it needs to properly publish to your blog. To create this file, create an Index Template named WLW Manifest which outputs a file by the name of wlwmanifest.xml to the root directory of your blog. Put the following contents into the body of the template:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<manifest xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wlw/manifest/weblog">
   <options>
     <clientType>MovableType</clientType>
     <supportsCategoriesInline>Yes</supportsCategoriesInline>
     <supportsSlug>Yes</supportsSlug>
     <supportsPages>Yes</supportsPages>
     <supportsScripts>Yes</supportsScripts>
     <supportsEmbeds>Yes</supportsEmbeds>
   </options>
   <weblog>
       <serviceName>Movable Type</serviceName>
       <homepageLinkText>View site</homepageLinkText>
       <adminLinkText>View Dashboard</adminLinkText>
       <adminUrl><mt:AdminScript encode_xml="1"></adminUrl>
       <postEditingUrl><mt:AdminScript encode_xml="1">?__mode=view&amp;_type=entry&amp;blog_id={blog-id}&amp;id={post-id}</postEditingUrl>
   </weblog>
</manifest>

  3. Setup Blog in LiveWriter

    1. From the Tools menu, select Accounts.
    2. Click the Add button.
    3. Click “Another weblog service” radio button and click Next.
    4. Enter your Blog URL, your username and your API password, then click Next.
    5. Select “Movable Type” from pull down menu, and enter in the URL to your XML-RPC script. For example: http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi
    6. Windows Live Writer will then ask you if you want to create a temporary post so that it can detect and configure Live Writer for the design of your blog. Select Yes or No.
    7. Confirm your blog name and click Finish.

That’s it. You can now post entries and pages to your Movable Type blog from Live Writer.

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1 Comment

LaRosa Johnson on January 10, 2008, 9:59 a.m. Reply

This is a great feature. I downloaded Windows Live Writer the other day just to give it a try and it works as advertised. There are a few drawbacks though (most of which deal with WLW and not MT:

1) If you use multiple categories, whichever comes first alphabetically will be the category that your entry is published under, with others being additional categories. For most things that’s fine, but when the default category is important, this is not the tool to use.

2) No way to change/edit/set the entry basename. Again, not too important for most people, but for those that need the ability, it’s not there.

3) Setting an entry as “scheduled” for a future date is not available, as it immediately publishes an entry, even with a future date.

For those that use their site as a CMS (like myself), this probably isn’t an option, but for basic blogging, this definitely fits the bill.

lj.