The tool of the blogger

The Blog Editor would no doubt be the tool of any blogger. All Blog Service Providers (BSPs) offer some form of an editor to edit blogs. There are also several stand-alone or off-line blog editors, most available for free. Of course you can use a simple text editor to write a post and then copy+paste (or FTP, if BSP allows) the article into your Blog.

At FundooGeek, we all use the Windows Live Writer. The Windows Live Writer or WLW, as it more commonly known as, makes it easy to publish content to your blog. theFundooGeek's research indicates that the WLW is also the most popular stand-alone blogging client. I've been using WLW ever since I started blogging... way before FundooGeek was born. Yes, I used to author other blogs as well, but now I'm 100% dedicated to FundooGeek {this sentence was for my Chief EditorGeek!}. Well, the software is intuitive and powerful, but just like any other tool, often I find something that could have been implemented in a better way. However, I've found the solutions to most of my WLW wish list items in the Windows Live Gallery thanks to the WLW and MSDN community developers who have taken the time to extend the application via the WLW SDK. The Gallery is filled with WLW plug-ins that enhance the functionality provided by WLW. We'll talk about the WLW Plug-ins in the next post.

One of the cool features about the Windows Live Writer is the interface. It is so easy with to use and configure. When you first install WLW, it will ask details about your blog. In case you haven't created a blog yet, it gives an option to create one. Otherwise you can use your existing blog. The WLW supports most of the BSPs that we know of. After you provide your blog details, WLW will sign-in and retrieve the template and all other relevant information. This is so cool 'coz it ensures the look and feel of your blog right in your editor. This is very helpful and WLW does an outstanding job as a WYSIWYG editor. Another feature, not unique to WLW, is the WLW provides 3 tabs at the bottom left of the editor window - Edit, Preview and Source. So you can edit using the WYSIWYG capability as well as you can use the Source tab to edit the HTML, if you are a geek. You can frequently check your post appearance in the Preview tab. WLW also has a drop-down list for selecting Categories for each post. You can select multiple categories and also add new ones. The new categories get applied to your original blog on your BSP account. Isn't that cool?

You can back up the settings and options of your Windows Live Writer by using a free tool such as the Live Write Backup Utility. It’s a free utility which eases the process of backing up and restoring your Windows Live Writer settings.

The tool of the blogger