More on Windows Live Writer and Drupal 6

Submitted by Corey Smith on Mon, 09/15/2008 - 17:57

These instructions are now outdated. I have moved the latest version of these instructions to our development site on Tribute Media. Please check them out there.

I posted a couple of days ago on Windows Live Writer for Drupal 6. You can follow the instructions there to set up your WLW instance on your Windows machine. We just released beta 4 of the WLW Blog API, so I thought that I would share a couple of configuration items.

blog api setupFirst, let me share with you the goal of the Blog API.

When we are building websites, we always add a lot of content for our clients. We will often write 40 - 50 pages of content for our clients. We'll have custom URL aliases depending on how the organization of the site is to be and we add all the keywords.

On Drupal 6, we use FCK Editor and it works really well. It still has some problems with MS Word content (even though is has a paste from Word function). FCK Editor just doesn't offer enough simplicity for loading content for development and especially not enough simplicity for teaching the novice how to post a blog or a page. Using FCK editor just takes a long time. Especially if we need to load a number of images.

The problem we found with WLW was that it wouldn't load keywords, menus or URL aliases. So, we fixed that.

Excerpt Field

After you have installed the WLW Blog API Module, you need to go to /admin/settings/wlw_blogapi and you will see the settings at the left. Your blog types are the content types that you can manage through the Blog API (of course, your permissions need to be set for the user).

The image below shows what field this relates to in WLW. WLW exceprt field

The excerpt field here gives you an option to change it's function from WLW. If you change the setting here to "make url alias" it will allow your post to create a URL alias without having to open the post after you make it. If you have this setting as I have on the left, but leave the field blank on WLW, then it will function as your URL aliases function normally (such as if you have PathAuto configured).

Menus

For the way we design, we want to add iimagetems to the menus as we build. You can default all of your posts to a menu. They'll go into the "0" weight setting of whatever menu you select. When you have loaded all your content, then you can simply go to the menu administration and drag and drop your menu items to the location you want.

Keywords

With the WLW module before, you couldn't load the keywords appropriately. If you had a Vocabulary (from the Taxonomy module) loaded for the content type, it would appear as a category option. That would work just fine. You can configure your NodeWords module to automatically apply those tags to your Meta Keywords, but sometimes you might want more Meta Keywords than you have tags... or sometimes you might not have any tags for a post and just want Meta Keywords. The WLW Blog API now allows you to add your keywords the Keywords section of WLW and it will automatically post your keywords to the appropriate meta field.



Corey Smith is the president of Tribute Media a web development firm providing high performing, industry specific websites. He is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer. His greatest passion is teaching, consulting and speaking.

You can find him on Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.

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Submitted by Corey Smith’s Business and Technology Blog » Windows Live Wr (not verified) on Mon, 09/15/2008 - 18:00.
[...] More on Windows Live Writer and Drupal 6 [...]

Submitted by ElmofromOK (not verified) on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 10:23.
Thank you so much for this. I had been planning on using WLW on my client sites when we started, but found that drupal 6 had broken it. I was really close to trying to create something on my own until I found this. Works like a charm. I cannot wait to get it set up and show it to my less tech savvy clients. They will love it.

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 10:37.
Thanks for the feedback. Please let me know if there are any problems that still need to be resolved or any features that you would like to see added. We have a few feature requests at the issues queue on Drupal.org. My passion is making technology work for the "less tech savvy" users, so this module is just a manifestation of that passion. If it still seems too complicated, then I want to fix it. Thanks!

Submitted by Corey Smith’s Business and Technology Blog » Do Business Lea (not verified) on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 17:13.
[...] you use tools like Windows Live Writer and a backend system like Drupal, then you don’t have to understand HTML to add pages. There [...]

Submitted by Joe Cheng [MSFT] (not verified) on Wed, 09/17/2008 - 16:36.
Hi, I'm one of the developers of Windows Live Writer. Feel free to contact me and we can talk about how to make Drupal and WLW work together as smoothly as possible.

Submitted by ElmofromOK (not verified) on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 08:33.
Is it possible to add and edit content types other than blog? I was thinking it would be possible to add and edit pages, and not have the content show up as a blog entry. Am I missing something obvious?

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 08:41.
Elmo... oh yeah... that was one of my main goals in making this work. We use it all the time for various projects. First, the BlogAPI needs to be set to manage the various content types. Second, the user must have create rights for the content types. Third, WLW should be set up right. if you look at this post for BlogAPI config and the other post for WLW setup, you should have everything you need. If you still have a problem let me know and I'll set up a Go To Meeting and show you how. We can even record it so that others can have the information readily.

Submitted by ElmofromOK (not verified) on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 08:54.
Smacks Head! When I read that page the first time I missed the /node/add part and did not set up WLW correctly. Setting it up correctly now. *few moments later** Works like a charm. I assume we will have to visit the site after posting to manage menu position and placement?

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 09:02.
Elmo, Good to hear that you got it. If you have the latest beta of the module installed, you can have it go into the menu of your choice automatically. Then you can just go to your menu admin and move it around. Hopefully a future version will allow for WLW to have direct access to the menu so that you can set the location exactly from WLW and not have to go into Drupal to do that.

I am so thrilled!!

Submitted by Mark Woodward (not verified) on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 04:11.

Corey, I came across this last night, and it solves a MAJOR issue I've been having with a client.  I do however have a couple of questions?

1) I don't see the "replace url" block on my screen.  I do have a checkbox that asks if I'll use excerpts, but no place to ask for a replace url.  I have pathauto enabled.

2) Probably a greater issue for me is that I don't see the taxonomy terms listed as categories.  I tried to 'refresh' the add category box in wlw, but still nothing.  The content type I'm editing has 12 taxonomy terms...any suggestions?

 

Again thanks

Tribute Media