Using Windows Live Writer

Getting started using Windows Live Writer with your CodePlex project is fairly simple. You can download Windows Live Writer here.

To start editing a page add a new “blog account” by selecting “Blogs > Add blog account…”.

AddBlogAccount

Select “Other Blog Service”, and enter your project URL, your CodePlex username and CodePlex password.

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Clicking the “Next >” button, Windows Live Writer will connect to your project page and retrieve all of the necessary information it requires to post entries.

Note: Windows Live Writer may prompt you to post a temporary entry to try and detect the themes. You can skip this step, as allowing it to run will not produce any different results. If you do allow this step to run, the temporary entry will be deleted for you.

When the setup process has finished, Windows Live Writer will allow you to nickname the account and switch to using it immediately.

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Now that your CodePlex project is setup as an account, you have access to open wiki pages, edit wiki pages, and create new wiki pages.

Creating New Content
Clicking on “File –> New post” will open an empty space for you to start writing your wiki content. Enter a unique title, and start writing your content.

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When you have finished editing your content, click the “Publish” button. This will create a new wiki page in your project titled “Demo Page”. Visiting your project page, you can click on the “Change History (all pages)” link to find that page that was just created.

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Editing Existing Content
Clicking on “File –> Open” and selecting your project will query the CodePlex servers to retrieve all of your current wiki pages, regardless if they’re currently in Wiki Markup or Html Markup.

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Note: If you select an existing wiki page that is in Wiki Markup, it will be auto-converted to Html Markup for you. After saving the page, it will be Html Markup going forward.

At this point, Windows Live Writer opens that wiki page up for editing.

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Once you have completed editing your content, click the “Publish” button. This will update the existing wiki page in your project.

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Windows Live Writer Q&A

Q: Can I add images to my wiki pages through Windows Live Writer?
A: Yes, images will be uploaded to CodePlex and attached to the wiki page.

Q: Can I add code samples to my wiki pages through Windows Live Writer?
A: Yes, you can use one of the many plugins to insert code. We recommend using Insert Code for Windows Live Writer, Source Code Formatter, or PreCode.

Q: Do I have to use Windows Live Writer?
A: No. Since we implement the MetaWeblog API, you can use any tool that uses this same API.

Q: Can I embed videos or Silverlight applications using Windows Live Writer?
A: No. Similarly to the web based editor, we will ignore this content. We are looking into supporting this in the future, however.

Last edited Aug 23, 2010 at 4:00 PM by Ethetica, version 4

Comments

adamtoth Feb 6 at 7:18 PM 
I also find that the image urls are broken. If you go into the HTML view after publishing, you'll see that the image points to some long ms download url for the host name. Just change that hostname to "http://www.codeplex.com" and the image will work again.

pauliom Dec 13, 2012 at 5:54 AM 
This page needs updating to the current version of Live Writer

AndyBrodie Oct 29, 2012 at 7:11 AM 
This is a great article, thanks for sharing!

Microsoft have moved the gallery links with the launch of Windows 8, from now on:

Insert Code For Windows Live Writer: http://plugins.live.com/writer/detail/insert-code-for-windows-live-writer
Source Code Formatter: http://plugins.live.com/writer/detail/source-code-formatter

Precode remains in the same place.

donovan_rh Sep 19, 2012 at 6:56 AM 
FYI Live Writer doesn't appear to be handling images properly. It is using the wrong URL so the images do not get displayed. Also it is uploading two versions (original size and scaled size) of each image and then only using one.

jefreitas Jul 23, 2012 at 1:06 PM 
A SERENIDADE É A CORDA K PUXA A CONFIANÇA

ffMathy Apr 21, 2012 at 1:11 AM 
I can't get this working for some reason.

ciyber Apr 7, 2012 at 6:20 PM 
Just incase, if you cannot connect uncheck the manually add proxy checkbox. Even if its is set correctly it clashes the connection.

EdVassie Apr 5, 2012 at 10:13 AM 
How do I set up and use Anchors using Live Writer? These are easy to do with Wiki markup and I use them a lot.

discretelogics Mar 7, 2012 at 10:20 AM 
"A: Yes, you can use one of the many plugins to insert code. We recommend using Insert Code for Windows Live Writer, Source Code Formatter, or PreCode."
These links are all dead.

wvd_vegt Mar 1, 2012 at 8:15 AM 
It greatly helps if you edit the projects homepage and save it with html markup!

tommck Feb 17, 2012 at 11:38 AM 
I am using the latest Windows Live Writer. It does not seem to have the ability to open existing files, so I can't get to "Home" from there. Anyone else having that problem?

tommck Feb 17, 2012 at 11:14 AM 
nevermind.. I figured it out :) Need to use my id <---- "tommck" and my password for TFS

tommck Feb 17, 2012 at 11:12 AM 
I login to Codeplex through the Windows Live integration and am having problems logging in with Live Writer. Am I supposed to use my TFS user ID?

obiwanjacobi Oct 19, 2011 at 4:04 PM 
How do I know what project I target?

theChrisKent Aug 29, 2011 at 3:19 PM 
All Code formatting plugin links appear to be broken (I get an error on the Windows Live page)

Autumoon Aug 2, 2011 at 2:18 AM 
After I fill username and password, and click the Next button, Live Writer ask me to choose blog type, I don't know which one is, and in your official guide, there's no such step.

jrs Mar 30, 2011 at 4:24 PM 
Regarding "Can I add code samples to my wiki pages through Windows Live Writer?" the first two links are broken and using the PreCode method results in HTML that looks no different than just using the PRE tag without using PreCode as the class type appears to simply be removed and there are no clear instructions on how to do or whether it's necessary to do the configuration of the javascript portion of the solution.

geoffbeaumont Mar 4, 2011 at 1:03 PM 
atomsoft, krohling - did you enter the address of your project or did you copy 'http://wikiplex.codeplex.com' from the screen grab at http://codeplex.codeplex.com/documentation?title=WindowsLiveWriter ? If you did, you're attempting to edit the wikiplex project not your own, hence the permissions error (no, I'm not admitting to how I came across this one...).

netrankbr2 Feb 15, 2011 at 4:35 PM 
Change http://wikiplex.codeplex.com TO http://yourProject.codeplex.com

christoc Jan 22, 2011 at 3:53 AM 
@deap82 choose File, Open recent post

deap82 Nov 28, 2010 at 6:40 AM 
I have upgraded to Windows Live Writer 2011, where do I find Open -> File?

amgc Nov 2, 2010 at 9:07 PM 
I'm getting "Server Error 4 Occurred...". What should i do?
I have WL account

JasperD Oct 22, 2010 at 10:42 PM 
Does not work when using Windows Live ID login instead of codeplex user account.

matteliot Sep 23, 2010 at 7:09 PM 
We need to be able to put SL content into these pages- there're a lot of SL projects on the site that we should be able to demo right in their project description pages, etc.

atomsoft Sep 16, 2010 at 1:00 PM 
I'm getting "Server Error 4 Occurred

You do not have permission to edit this wiki page with your current credentials." How to resove this error?

krohling Sep 15, 2010 at 8:19 PM 
I'm getting "Server Error 4 Occurred - You do not have permission to edit this wiki page with your current credentials". Please note, I am logged in and I am a Coordinator.

acqy Sep 4, 2010 at 6:22 AM 
Yeah, that's the great idea that using the MetaWeblog API on codeplex since we are able to edit the pages with blog editors. This helped me a lot when preparing the technical documents for my projects. Thanks!

mattica Aug 26, 2010 at 12:13 PM 
Is there a way to link with MS Word instead of Live Writer? The wizard is a bit different and not able to link. Any luck?

mjg Aug 24, 2010 at 10:07 PM 
This is awesome! Thanks for adding this.

orcmid Aug 20, 2010 at 8:12 PM 
Wow! Using MetaWeblog API for wiki edits. I see that the granularity here is at the project level. I wonder how it would generalize as an interface to, umm, let me think, ... Wikipedia or any Media Wiki wiki?