Insert Related Posts from WordPress Plugin for Windows Live Writer

Posted on Apr 6, 2010 in Productivity, Tutorials, WordPress by dee 8 Comments

Related Posts for WordPress is a Live Writer plugin that I wrote to allow me to have control over inserting related posts from my WordPress blog directly from within Windows Live Writer.

Although there are plugins available directly for WordPress that allows for this to happen within the WordPress Dashboard, I hate the online editor and use Windows Live Writer exclusively. As such, I wanted to created Related Posts links within the posts without having to apply lots of intelligence around tags, categories etc.

It is quite easy to use and will add directly into the post wherever the cursor is.

Once configured, it can retrieve all the posts from your hosted WordPress blog and allow you to select one or more posts and inserts into the post.

It has the following features:

• Ability to store your blog details and settings
• Encloses the related links in DIV—>UL—>LI html links
• Allows for CSS class labeling of the DIV, UL and LI Links, so that you can control the look and feel of the links
• Gives an un-styled preview of the links to show you at a glance which links have been chosen and will be inserted into the post.
• Allows to insertion of “target=_blank” in the a links to allow the links to be opened in a new window if required.

To see installation and usage details, see below

Installation Details

 

This release is still in beta stage and hence is not available via the Live Plugins center. As such, the installation files are not in MSI format.

Additionally, this is created using .net 3.5 and the Live center only allows .net 2.0 compiled binaries at the moment.

In order to install, you need to download the following zip file:

Plugin Dll’s – two DLL’s are contained within this archive, one is the plugin code itself and the other is a helper library to allow Live Writer to communicate with WordPress via MetaWeblog API.

Unzip these DLL’s directly into your Live Writer plugin folder (usually found in C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\Plugins)

Note: there isn’t an icon available for the plugin yet, so it may throw an error when you start Live Writer.

Restart Live Writer to enable the plugin. You will see the new plugin under the list of your installed Plugins.

When you first click the plugin link, you need to set up the configuration. Click the Settings… button

Enter your Blog details here. This will be used to connect to your WordPress blog to retrieve a list of the posted articles.

The HTML formatting options allows you to place class tags on the containing DIV, UL and LI tags. Leaving them blank will allow them to inherit the default settings set up in the blogs stylesheet.

How to Use Related Posts Plugin for Windows Live Writer

 

Step 1: Assuming the Settings is completed, hit Retrieve Posts to get a list of all the posts in the blog. This can take some time if there number of posts in the blog is quite high:

Step 2: Simply scroll through the list and tick whichever posts that needs to be included as a related post, and click Choose Posts…

A preview of the relevant links will be shown. The user can make changes to the selected items and re-click Choose Posts… to fine tune the selection.

Step 3: Click on “Insert into Post” to close the window and copy the HTML to wherever the cursor is in Windows Live Writer.

Here is the html that made the following related posts content:

Notes

 

This doesn’t put a heading on the content. It just puts in an unordered list of the links.

My thanks to Scott (http://scottisafool.spaces.live.com/) for inspiration and making his code available to all to read, digest and create their own plugins.

Disclaimer

 

This plugin is a very simple plugin and doesn’t do naughty things like steal passwords etc. It comes as is and is not covered by any warranty. Feel free to use is and recommend any improvements or report any bugs you may find. This was written over a period of a few days only, so the code can do with a bit of a tidy up.

I will eventually upload this to the Live plugins center but until then, I’m looking forward to hearing any feedback (good or bad!)

Related Links

Tags: How To, Live Writer, Plugins, Tutorials, WordPress

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  Larry Henry Nov 3 2010 - 5:05 am Reply

  This is a plug-in I have been asking for from Windows Live Writer team for a while, but seems you see the usefulness of being able to, or having a tool like this— which is awesome.

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t works for me. I tried it on my 64-bit and 32-bit system.

  And from SNAPHOW [.com], I believe the issue might be the memory requirement from WordPress; same issue Windows Live Writer 2011 is having for pulling posts over 100+…

  I believe this could be resolved if the plug-in could be changed to only download the last 100 posts or if the plug-in could download all the headers another way, keep it local, and the only download the latest headers from the last update.

  I will be willing to help test if you require it. I worked with Scott Lovegrove on his Clipboard plug-in a few months ago.

  I appreciate it…
  Until next time,
  Larry Henry Jr.

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  dee Nov 3 2010 - 7:59 am Reply

  Hi Larry, Given that this tool is getting some attention now, I’m working on some updates that I hope can be rolled out in the next few days. This includes local storage of the headers and ability to set headings etc.

  I haven’t given this a vigorous test in 2011 yet but will do once I get a stable build going :-)

  Dee.

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  Larry Henry Nov 3 2010 - 8:44 am Reply

  Well, if and when your ready; let me know. I have a Windows 7 32-bit, Windows XP and Windows Vista VM standing by to test on— i’d be glad to help.

  I appreciate it…

  Until next time,
  Larry Henry Jr.

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