Sundance

Hi,

Some time ago I posted about making Windows Live Writer work with Drupal. Since then Microsoft have launched a new version of Windows Live Writer (WLW) and so the instructions on how to make it work with Drupal have changed - now it's much easier! (Obviously, if you are still using an older version of WLW then the previous post will still be valid for you).

For this walkthrough on making WLW post to Drupal I am assuming that your blog appears at a URL which looks something like this:

http://www.mysite.com/blog/username

If you have set your own URLs or maintained URLs from an old Web site then it might look like this:

http://www.mysite.com/blog/username.shtml

If you don't use search engine friendly URLs (SEF) it might look completely different. That is fine.

1. The WLW wizard gives you three choices: Windows Live Spaces, Sharepoint Weblog and Another Weblog Service. Select "Another Weblog Service". Click Next.  (If you can't see the wizard go to "Weblog" menu --> "add weblog account" and the wizard will appear.)

2. You will be asked for your "weblog homepage URL". Enter the URL of your blog minus the last part. Basically the main blog directory. For example:

http://www.mysite.com/blog/

Also enter your Drupal username and password below.  Click Next.

3. It will probably say "Windows Live Writer was not able to automatically detect your blog settings...". This is fine. From the "Type of Weblog" list select Moveable Type API.

In the "Remote Posting URL of your Weblog" box put http://www.mysite.com/xmlrpc.php

Click Next.

4. The next screen will give you a list of the blogs you have on your Drupal site and also other things such as forums, polls etc. Select the blog you want to use WLW for, probably something like Admin:Blog, and click next.

5. You will then be asked if you would like WLW to create a temporary post (to detect the theme) which it will then delete immediately. To cut a long story short this is a good thing, so click "yes".

6. After some seconds a warning will tell you that it couldn't download your style template. This is fine. Maybe in the future WLW will support Drupal in this way, but it is only a small feature and doesn't add much. Click OK.

7. You will then get a screen showing all your settings. Click Finish and you are nearly done.

Important!!!

You have to make one small change to your Drupal configuration.

8. Go to Administer › Site configuration › Input formats

9. Next to the default "Filtered HTML" setting click on "confiugure".

10. On the next page click on "configure".

11. Scroll down to "Allowed HTML tags"

12. In the box add two tags (the two WLW uses for line breaks, paragraphs etc). The tags you need to add are:

---

<p> and </ p>

---

Then save configuration and you have finished.