WordPress and Microsoft Word
I am writing this post in Word and publishing through it as well. I didn’t even know that was possible. I used to use Live Writer a lot when writing blogposts, but it seems it hasn’t been updated in a while. 2012 it says, but it sure as hell doesn’t work like it should in Windows 8. I find it easier to write my post in a desktop application like Word, it’s also easier when you are, let’s say, offline or if you need to copy-paste a screenshot or any other picture. It will even upload a picture you copied from your browser, it’s not just a URL reference. And you can crop the images and only the cropped part will be uploaded. There’s just one drawback: you can’t edit HTML or insert code snippets. You need to do that through your WordPress administration dashboard. But I just tend to frame my post in Word, upload it, add the code and publish and you’re done.
Connecting your WordPress blog to word
Start Word and find the right template. You can also search for it by typing in “blog” in the search box. Select Blog post to start blogging.
The first time you will be asked to register a blog account.
Click register now and you will get to set up the connection to your blog. Choose WordPress.
After selecting the right blog provider, you will be asked for your blog details. For WordPress that usually is the URL to your blog + “/xmlrpc.php”, but that should already be there. Give in your credentials and remember to tick the Remember Password checkbox, so you don’t have to enter your password each time you are connecting to your blog.
Click OK and that should be it. You are now connected to your blog!
Publishing through Word
The first thing you’ll notice is a ribbon exclusively for your blog.
Besides editing options, you can also open your existing blog posts from here (published and drafts). You can’t see if it’s a draft though, but I hope you will know what you have published yet and what not J
Well, just start blogging. Enter a title and start blogging. It won’t show up as you would see it on your blog, but that’s exactly the same in WordPress itself. Just make sure you got your styles right. Normal for paragraph and headings for your headings etc. You can save your blogpost locally on your harddisk and publish it later.
After you have finished your blog post, you can upload it by selecting Publish > Publish (as Draft). I normally publish it as a draf and check it in the browser for errors, or I add the things I couldn’t add in Word itself.
You can preview it from your WordPress admin. Go there, select posts and you will notice the post you’ve just sent.
Now click Preview to check your post.
And if everything is OK, Publish it and you’re done! You can always manage and add accounts through the “Manage Accounts” button on the ribbon. I hope that some of you have learned something new, otherwise this was probably just a waste of time J Have fun editing in Word!
