How to: configure Windows Live Writer for Dotclear (or any other blog not listed)

Posted by Cynthia September 05, 2006

Windows Live Writer supports no less than 9 blogging platforms, excluding WordPress custom installations. It also supports the Metaweblog API as well as the Movable Type API.

These last two options make that Windows Live Writer can work with almost any blogging platform — including Dotclear.

To configure Windows Live Writer to work with Dotclear, first enter your blog information as you normally would when adding an new Weblog Account to Windows Live Writer:

In the Weblog Homepage URL field, enter your Dotclear homepage.

Once you click Next, Windows Live Writer will start to analyze and, as it doesn’t recognize the blog platform, present you with the option to manually select the type of Weblog you’re using.

In our case we select Movable Type:

Selecting the Custom (Movable Type API) will also work.

After selecting the blogging platform, enter the full URL to the xmlrpc.php file. If your Dotclear installation is in a folder named dotclear, your URL would be:

http://example.com/dotclear/ecrire/xmlrpc.php

Now when you click Next, Windows Live Writer will retrieve the settings of your Dotclear blog and you can start posting.

Note: this type of configuration works with all blog platforms which support either the Metaweblog API or the Movable Type API. Popular (blog) platforms such as bBlog, Community Server and Drupal, to name but three, work with the Metaweblog API, for example.

Finally, here is a quick screencast of the steps involved in configuring Windows Live Writer to work with Dotclear (or other API supported platforms).

Thanks to Philippe Lagane’s original idea and his subsequent information!

tags: windows live writer, wlw, tutorial, screencast, dotclear, moveable type api, metaweblog api, api

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5 Responses to “How to: configure Windows Live Writer for Dotclear (or any other blog not listed)”

Comments

philippe Sep 05 2006 / 5pm

Thanks Cynthia :)
Jon of SMA Sep 05 2006 / 6pm

Does this process work with the Vox beta or the Blogger Beta. I tried to set up Live Writer with the Blogger beta and it failed. Maybe my lack of typing skills caused that to fail, but since flickr still does not integrate with the Blogger beta I assumed it was the lack of APIs.
Cynthia Sep 05 2006 / 8pm

No Jon of SMA, there is nothing wrong with your typing skills. Unless you had a Blogger account and downgraded to Blogger Beta there is no way (yet) to work with Blogger Beta.

Google has, in an apparent hastily response, rushed out a web service which has changed its API so completely and so suddenly that others, like Windows Live Writer, Flock and Flickr have been caught totally off guard.

In other words: nothing currently works with Blogger Beta….

As for Vox I only know that Windows Live Writer doesn’t work with it but that it might be possible down the line.
Julien Apr 11 2007 / 3pm

Thanks for this post, it was helpfull :)

Could you help me with this issue :

Among the blogs I manage, one is password protected (using a .htaccess file) and WLW cannot retrieve any files from this blog.
I tried adding the login and password in the url like : http://login:password@www.website.com/… but it doesn’t help.

Do you know how to publish from WLW on such a password protected blog ?

Thanks again
Cynthia Apr 11 2007 / 7pm

That’s a good question, one I can’t help you with. I think there is no way to do this though.

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