I just returned from a digital communications conference of the Presbyterian Communicators Network called "Plugging in Without Shorting Out." I discovered that a number of my colleagues there did not yet know about Windows Live Writer, an offline blog editing application which is part of the free downloadable suite called Windows Live Essentials, which runs on Windows 7, Vista, and XP. See detailed system requirements here.
I maintain this blog, CyberKenBlog, using Windows Live Writer. It’s very convenient to compose my blog pages in Live Writer offline, taking my time to perfect my copy and embed various resources, such as the two videos in this post. Consult the first video to learn how to download, install, and connect Live Writer to your blog.
The second video, below, will teach you the basics of editing with Live Writer.
In addition to providing offline editing, Windows Live Writer also keeps track of all your back posts, and can retrieve a post so that you can make corrections in it and then re-publish the copy by clicking on the "publish" button, which overwrites the version on the server, making the corrected copy public.
If you maintain a Drupal web site, as I do, you also might like to use Live Writer to edit your Drupal web pages. Consult the previous link to get the set-up instructions.
If you’re a Windows user, I highly recommend Windows Live Writer!
Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.] If you’re a blogger you’ll find this tool incredibly helpful- and it’s refreshingly free from Microsoft.
The plug-ins make it even greater…
Here’s a link to the main Windows Live Writer gallery…
http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=9&pl=8
Until next time,
Larry Henry Jr.