Although the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor is very cool, I find it hard to write articles/blogs with it. For example, depending on your browser the editor seems to display different. In Chrome the editor spans to fill the entire window but in Internet Explorer it only spans to about 500 pixels, then leaves the rest of the window empty. Not only that but on my laptop it works worse with Chrome than it does with Internet Explorer.
To those of you who don.t know what WYSIWYG stands for: .What You See Is What You Get.. This term is typically (at least as far as I know) used for word/document editors and is intended to imply that what you are seeing when you edit the document is what you see when you publish it.
Above all (for me) the editor just doesn.t display formatting quite precisely. Of course the document is going to look different once published to a site with CSS styles applied, but I.ve found that even with just a standard (CSS-less) website it doesn.t come out quite the same. Tables are hard to manipulate and images don.t always align quite right.
For all the reasons (and I.m sure more if I thought longer about it) I don.t want to use the editor built into Joomla for writing my blogs. After a little time digging around I stumbled upon Windows Live Writer. I know it.s been out for a while but I just recently started doing this so I haven.t had the need/interest until now. The first thing I did was Google .Windows Writer and Joomla. and came up with blogs/forums from people indicating that they had gotten it to work. Great!
After following the instructions from the first article on how to setup Joomla for Windows Live Writer, it didn.t work. It described that I need to turn on the .XML-RPC Blogger API., then tell Writer to setup with .Other blog service. and VOILA it works. Well they were wrong. Perhaps that worked in earlier versions of Joomla but it didn.t work in mine (which happens to be the latest 1.5).
Here is what DOES work with the latest version of Joomla AND Writer:
- Install MetaWeblog API on your Joomla website: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/metaweblogapi/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3263
- Install RSD on your Joomla website: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/rsd/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3299
- Go to Site->Global Configuration and turn on .Enable Web Services. in the .System. tab.
- Note that this was the critical step that I only found documented easily in any forums/blogs online.
- Now open Windows Live Writer, choose .Other blog service. for the new account (Go to .Add blog account. if you already have a different blogging account setup in Writer).
- Enter .http://www.yourwebsite/xmlrpc/index.php. for the website (replace yourwebsite.com with the actual domain of your website).
- Enter the username and password you would like your posts to be published to.
- Writer should do the rest of the configuration.
Note: After I installed MetaWeblog and the RSD plug-in on my website I was able to connect to it with Writer. I could make any posts to the website until I performed step 3 and turned on the web services.
Now the next effort on my website will be supporting commenting on my blogs/articles. I installed JComment on my website today. Although the component/plug-in installed without a problem, I wasn.t able to get it working in the end. I keep getting an error about rpc.php when I try to post a comment. I.m fearful the issue has something to do with the component configuration I have that allows my Windows Live Writer to work. We.ll see.
It could probably be a lot easier to use something like WordPress for what I want to do on this end of my website. But, I don.t really want to pay $300+ for WordPress for a hobby like this when I can use freeware and support my hobby in the process.
Note: Pictures upload with my blogs quite nicely as well. I even noticed that Writer automatically puts a forty-five degree drop-shadow on the pictures before it publishes them. Very cool.