Posting to multiple blogs using Live Writer (How to)

Live Writer is a desktop application from Microsoft that allows the user to easily post to Microsoft Live Spaces, Blogger, wordpress, and other blog software (either hosted or on your own server). The WYSIWYG tool is amazingly easy to setup and use and posting to multiple blogs is a snap.

Learn more about Livewriter here (and download it, too!)

So, here’s my quick how-to:

On the menu>Under Weblog>Add a weblog

A wizard pops up:

Choose “Another Web Service”
(in other words, blogger, wordpress, etc. aren’t listed in the default)
Click Next.

Type in the URL of your blog and password and login.

Click Next.

Now, LiveWriter will attempt to connect with your blog:

If it is unsuccessful, then you may need to change some settings, such as choosing the type of blog account or changing settings based upon your specific blog settings.
Make any changes needed and click Next.

Once LiveWriter is successful, the message Weblog successfully configured pops up, along with a spot to change the name of the blog, and edit other settings.

On the right sidebar menu, is a list of the blogs configured, a list of tools (insert table, etc.). To crosspost to a blog, Under weblog, choose the “new” blog, and then click publish (far left top menu).
(Sorry the image is so small, blogger shrunk it)

How to add a comments list in blogger

So, one little nifty (?) blogger trick is to include a quick way to see comments without logging in. Of course, this means everyone can see them, too.

I had to search around a bit to find the feed for the comments, so I thought I’d post it a hopefully easy place:

All comments:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Per post comments:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/IDOFPOST/default

Okay, so let’s do the ‘all comments’.

Login into your blogger account.

Go to the Dashboard.
Settings>Template

Choose Add Page Element.
Choose Feed.

Add your feed url. Click continue.

Now configure it and click Save Changes. Then Save your template.

How to add a latest comments list in blogger

 I’ll try to do this for wordpress.com, too, as part of my experiment here is to see which one I like better (blogger vs. wordpress)

———-

So, one little nifty (?) blogger trick is to include a quick way to see comments without logging in. Of course, this means everyone can see them, too.

I had to search around a bit to find the feed for the comments, so I thought I’d post it a hopefully easy place:

All comments:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Per post comments:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/IDOFPOST/default

Okay, so let’s do the ‘all comments’.
Login into your blogger account.
Go to the Dashboard.

Settings >Template

Choose Add Page Element

Choose Feed.

Save Changes

Then Save your template.

Link to all blogger posts

So, I was trying to figure out how to create a link to all of my blogger posts. This one will work for now:
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

wordpress.com vs. blogger.com

So, I’ve been trying to figure out if I want to move to wordpress.com or use wordpress.org on my domain, or do something entirely different (I’m running drupal on my domain). Occasionally, I have considered moving over to wordpress.com as well… I like wordpress. It’s not so much that I hate blogger, it’s ok, but I’ve been wanting to do something with all of my baby* blogs for a long while. Anyhow, back when I created the baby* blogs, blogger didn’t offer labels or categories (well, they still don’t offer true categories). WordPress.com wasn’t available. I used the baby blogs as a primitive form of categories.

The main reason I started using blogger was for an example for a class project journal. I wanted blog software that was free and easy to use in hopes that it would become an acceptible alternative to creating static html pages (yuck!) on the university’s website. There weren’t alot of alternatives then. I continued using blogger because I received a little bit of traffic from blogger (next blog, or searching in blogger), and I thought that was kind of nice. So, is it better to host on a domain or using a public blog software like wordpress.com or blogger?

..but maybe it’s time to rethink my whole blog presence. Neither wordpress.com or blogger is great, both have limits. When I started thinking about moving over to wordpress.com, I was excited about the ideas of true categories (wouldn’t it be nice to collapse all of my baby blogs into categories here?) but the lack of customized CSS is an issue. I do like wordpress and I would support it, but I don’t know… considering I can do all of those things for free if I host it, then it seems silly to pay extra to have it hosted elsewhere.

So, the dilemma. I read this article about blogger vs. wordpress vs. livejournal and I read this one, too. Basically, all of the same stuff. WordPress = categories good, Blogger = customize CSS good.

Here is my list of pros and cons. Here is my site mirrored here and here it is at blogger. Yes, it does not look like my site at blogger (the not able to customize templates, only headers issue). I’d love to hear from others who have used wordpress, blogger, or any other publicly hosted blog software. What were the advantages and disadvantages? Was it truly better to just host on your own domain? How easy (or not easy) is it to export from a public site (wordpress.com) to a domain?

*baby blogs = Not a blog about babies or small children, but a blog that is part of a larger blog. (just in case you didn’t catch on to that….)

blogger.com vs. wordpress.com

So, I’ve been trying to figure out if I want to move to wordpress.com or use wordpress.org on my domain, or do something entirely different (I’m running drupal on my domain). Occasionally, I have considered moving over to wordpress.com as well… I like wordpress. It’s not so much that I hate blogger, it’s ok, but I’ve been wanting to do something with all of my baby* blogs for a long while. Anyhow, back when I created the baby* blogs, blogger didn’t offer labels or categories (well, they still don’t offer true categories). WordPress.com wasn’t available. I used (and still use) the baby blogs as a primitive form of categories, which apparently this person does also and automates the process.

The main reason I started using blogger was for an example for a class project journal. I wanted blog software that was free and easy to use in hopes that it would become an acceptible alternative to creating static html pages (yuck!) on the university’s website. There weren’t alot of alternatives then. I continued using blogger because I received a little bit of traffic from blogger (next blog, or searching in blogger), and I thought that was kind of nice. So, is it better to host on a domain or using a public blog software like wordpress.com or blogger?

..but maybe it’s time to rethink my whole blog presence. Neither wordpress.com or blogger is great, both have limits. When I started thinking about moving over to wordpress.com, I was excited about the ideas of true categories (wouldn’t it be nice to collapse all of my baby blogs into categories here?) but the lack of customized CSS is an issue. I do like wordpress and I would support it, but I don’t know… considering I can do all of those things for free if I host it, then it seems silly to pay extra to have it hosted elsewhere.

So, the dilemma. I read this article about blogger vs. wordpress vs. livejournal and I read this one, too. Basically, all of the same stuff. WordPress = categories good, Blogger = customize CSS good.

Here is my list of pros and cons. Here is my site mirrored at wordpress.com. Yes, it does not look like my site at blogger (the not able to customize templates, only headers issue). I’d love to hear from others who have used wordpress, blogger, or any other publicly hosted blog software. What were the advantages and disadvantages? Was it truly better to just host on your own domain? How easy (or not easy) is it to export from a public site (wordpress.com) to a domain?

*baby blogs = Not a blog about babies or small children, but a blog that is part of a larger blog. (just in case you didn’t catch on to that….)

display only selected blogger labels (tags)

For those of you who use blogger and use labels/tags, just a heads up, if you delete posts that you have labelled or try to remove labels, it may not work properly. If you need help deleting labels, check this post.

A few ways around displaying all labels (and it would seem that this would be a feature in blogger at some point):

Use a html links list. Create a html links list to just the labels that you want to display. This approach works well if you want to display just a few labels.

Use del.icio.us ! Tag the labels you want to display using del.icio.us (ah! del.icio.us — my friend!)
http://del.icio.us/ and then use a del.icio.us link roll to a generate the script for you. Very easy.

1. Click on each of the labels you want to include in your list. Add the url for the label to your del.icio.us account. However, you’ll want to do a couple of unique things for these links:

1. 1. • Description: [blogger label name]
      • Tags: [Give your blog labels a unique tag — this should be the same for all of the blogger labels… I used blogger_labels in my experiment)
      • Save.
      • Do this for each blogger label that you want to display in your label list.

2. Go to the del.icio.us link roll creator http://del.icio.us/help/linkrolls

1. 1. • Make any choices you want but to only display the blogger labels:
      • Under Display options, check => Use only these tags (choose your unique blogger tag, in my example, blogger_labels )

3. Copy and paste the script into your blogger template or using Add page element, click on text option. Give your labels a name and copy + paste the code in.
Voila!

Using method 1 or 2, you can choose labels based on any particular criteria: your favorite topics, etc.

Looking for a way to limit blogger labels in a tag cloud? Read this.

deleting unused labels in blogger

For those of you who use blogger and use labels/tags, just a heads up, if you delete posts that you have labelled or try to remove labels, it may not work properly. You’ve removed the label from all posts, yet there it is in the label list, with a post count. Clicking on the post count, shows no posts associated with it. What to do?

I kept thinking about this, until I came up with a few workarounds. After much searching around at blogger groups, basically, the answers were create a list manually (the obvious!) or just create a “fake” post so that the missing label would match something (and no worry about the post count). I didn’t like that idea AT ALL; however, I did find that you could create a blank post and then delete links that did work:

If you end up with a label which has no posts associated with it, try this:

Create a post (no title, no content) with the label
Publish
Edit post/Save it as draft
Under the batch edit, delete the post.

If your unused label has a post count of 3, you will need to do this 3 times. I know, a pain, but it does work.

Somehow it seems like this might be causing something to resync? Not sure, but worth a try…

If you are looking for a way to show selected blogger labels, check out this post.
Looking for a way to limit blogger labels in a tag cloud? Read this.
and of course, the peramalink for this post is here: