Introduction

Windows Live Essentials from Microsoft features several software packages which are available to download for free and which can be used for everyday tasks on the computer. Some of the software available can be seen at this website: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?os=win7 and they include Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Messenger, Writer and Family Safety. 

In this blog post we are going to focus on one of these software packages called Windows Live Writer. Here are a few words about Windows Live Writer extracted from the Windows Live Essentials webpage, http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer :

"Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service--Windows Live, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and many more. Writer is part of Windows Live Essentials, which includes free programs for photos, movies, instant messaging, e‑mail, blogging, family safety, and more. Get Writer or get them all--they're free!"

Writer is indeed easy to use and it allows you to publish to your favorite blog server in a few easy steps or, if you don't already have a blog, you can let Writer create one for you so that you can start posting.  

Download

To download Writer follow this link: http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/en/wlsetup-web.exe

Learn the basics

Let's work through the process of setting up Writer so that you can publish blog posts to your blog. In order to do this you need to have a blogging service such as Blogger, WordPress, MovableType etc. If you do not, you will have to create one.

Follow these steps to set-up Writer: 

1. Open Writer. 

2. The first time you open writer, you get a window message asking you what blog you use. If you don't have a blog you can let Windows Live create one for you by selecting "I don't have a blog; create one on Windows Live for me" and following the instructions which are really easy. If you already have a blog, select the right choice from the list. Figure 1 shows this window message: 

Figure 1: Writer, What blog service do you use?

For the purpose of this blog post, we used Blogger as our blogging server to illustrate how to set-up Writer

3. Click Next

4. You will be prompted with another window asking you for the address of your blog (the address people go to to see your website) and your username and password to access that server. In Figure 2 below, we used a test blog hosted by Blogger and we used the username and the password that we would use to log-in into Blogger.

5. Click Next. If everything went well, you should see a window loading your blog. After it finishes loading your blog you will see a final window letting you know that "Your blog has been set up".

6. Type a name for your blog. This is the name that will be used in Writer to distinguish from any other blogs that you will create in Writer. Our blog is simply called Test Blog. 

 

Figure 3: Writer, Your blog has been set up window

7. Click Finish. 

At this point you should be able to write a blog post as you would write a paper in Microsoft Word. To publish your blog go to File -> Publish to Blog.

Another thing that you need to be aware of is the Accounts menu located in the Tools drop-down menu. Here you can manage your accounts by adding a new blog, editing an existing one or deleting one (deleting is referred to removing from Writer). 

A final note about Writer is knowing how to select in which blog to publish when you have multiple accounts created in Writer. To select the blog in which you want to publish go to the Blogs menu and you should see all your blogs listed below the Edit blog settings option. Figure 4 shows our two blogs, Test Blog and Test Blog 2 in this list with Test Blog being selected as the blog where our next blog post will be published. You can tell which blog is selected by the check mark next to your blog's name:

Figure 4: Writer, the Blogs menu

To get more information on how to use Windows Live Writer, consider accessing the Help menu within Writer. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact the STA Office at sta-help@trincoll.edu or at x2589.