Version 14.0.8117.416 is part of the new Wave 3 suite of the Live Essentials package.

Most Windows platforms are supported, however the installer still complains when trying to run via Windows 2003 Server.

I’ve extracted the MSI package for Writer and placed it on my Live SkyDrive in case you need to install it for Windows Server 2003. Read below for instructions and download links.

You can download the MSI here: http://bit.ly/Writer14_0_8117_416 

A few notes:

If you already have an older version of Writer installed, you will need to uninstall it first. To be safe, back up your Plugins folder (normally found in c:\program files\Windows Live Writer\Plugins) and store in a safe place before uninstalling.

I uninstalled Writer using the Add/Remove programs applet in my control panel.

Once uninstalled, you can then right click on my MSI and select Install. It should install Writer automatically.

When I installed it, it didn’t lose my blog settings or my plug ins. Be prepared to set up everything again should it be required.

If you have any issues, feel free to place a comment and I’ll try and assist as much as possible.

Would appreciate a tweet/share/comment if you found the above useful :)

Related Posts

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

When a blog is set up first in Windows Live Writer, the theme and style sheet is automatically downloaded from the blog to provide this preview functionality.

If the theme or style sheet is changed, you will need to manually refresh in Windows Live Writer to get the latest version to ensure that the preview remains accurate. Its a few simple steps to do this…

Open Windows Live Writer and select your blog from the Blogs menu. If you haven’t configured Windows Live Writer yet, feel free to go here to for a refresher: How To Configure Windows Live Writer for WordPress Blogs.

Once you have selected the blog you wish to refresh, select Blogs..Edit Blog Settings from the menu bar:

Click on the Editing menu and you’ll see a button to Refresh Theme. Click that. A small dialog box will appear that shows the progress:

Once this is complete, the theme should be refreshed and clicking on the Preview tab in Windows Live Writer should show the latest version of your website with your new article in it.

Note: The application may ask you if it can post a dummy article to your blog to allow it to retrieve the theme correctly. This post is deleted immediately afterwards, so feel free to allow it to do so.

This article will show you how to configure Windows Live Writer to work with your WordPress blog.

Prerequisites

The requirements before you start is that you have downloaded Windows Liver Writer and have it installed on your machine and also that you have a hosted WordPress installation somewhere. It doesn’t matter if the blog is a self-hosted one or one that is hosted on wordpress.com, the steps are the same…

Step 1

NOTE: This may not be required for blogs hosted on wordpress.com. This is typically only required for self-hosted WordPress blogs. In this case, go to Step 2.

Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard, and under Settings.. Writing, ensure that the following item is checked:

Turning on XML-RPC will allow Windows Live Writer to connect to your WordPress blog. Scroll down and hit “Save Changes” to commit the changes.

Step 2

Start Windows Live Writer, go to the Blogs menu and click on “Add Blog Account…”

Choose “Other Blog Service” and hit Next

Step 3

Enter your web address of your blog, your admin username and password and hit next. If you like you can select “Remember my password”

Step 4

Windows Live Writer will now connect to the blog, analyze and set up the application.

During the analysis process, you may get a dialog box as below:

Hit Yes to this as this will ensure that you can get an accurate preview of your posts in Windows Live Writer.

Once it has completed setting up the application, it will display the following information:

Choose a name that can identify your blog and hit Finish.

Conclusion

That should be it. You can connect to several blogs at the same time in Windows Live Writer. To switch from one blog to another, its as simple as selecting the relevant blog from the Blogs menu in the menu bar.

I’ll set up some more posts later on how to get the best use out of Windows Live Writer. If there is anything in particular that you wish to know, please leave a comment and let us know :)

Relevant Links

• Download Windows Live Writer page: http://download.live.com/writer
• Installing Windows Live Writer on Windows Server 2003

While I had the latest version of both installed at home, I had a major issue installing Windows Live Writer at work. I run Windows Server 2003 on my desktop at work and the installer for Windows Live simply refused to work on it.

After a bit of research, i found that it was only the installer that had the issue and I could install Windows Live Writer via the .msi. In the end, I found the .msi file in my temp folder on my Vista machine at home. (I also found an .msi on the net, but that was for either Dutch or an older version). This one is for Windows Live Writer 2009

For others who are running Windows Server 2003 and the installer complaining, I’ve uploaded the .msi file to my Skydrive. You can download it from here:

http://tinyurl.com/gimmeWindowsLiveWriterMSI

NOTE: This is the 32 bit version!

If you need any other MSI’s (eg, Live Messenger, etc), please leave a comment or send me an email.

I’d appreciate a comment if this helps you in any way :)

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