Using Windows Live Writer with Umbraco
Umbraco has a really neat feature that lets you create posts from Windows Live Writer, Word 2007/2010, MarsEdit, Scribefire or any other MetaWebLog compatible application. And as an added bonus, it's really easy to set up.
Setting up your Umbraco site
Configure user content channel
Log on your Umbraco installation backend with an administrator
user and navigate to the user you want to enable this feature
for.
Click on the "Content Channel" tab and fill it out with the
mapping information specific for your site. See image below for
example.
Document Type: The type of page you want to the post to be
created as.
Description field: Which property the main text in WLW should be
mapped to.
Category field: Must be mapped to a "Tag" property type or not
used.
Excerpt field: Don't use.
Configure template (Optional)
Go to your site's master template and add the following lines to the <head /> section:
Setting up Windows Live Writer
Install Windows Live Writer if you haven't done so already.
If you haven't started the application before, you'll be greeted with the wizard that guides you through configuring WLW for your site.
If this is not the case, you need to open up "Options" by
clicking on the blue button in the upper left corner.
Then click "Add" to open the same wizard mentioned above.
You'll then be presented with the following dialog:
Click "Other services" and "Next".
If you didn't perform the optional step "Configure template", then you get the following dialog when clicking "Next":
Change "www.eyecatch.no" with the address for your site, and select the provider when you click "Next".
You'll then be asked if you want to download the blog theme for
offline previewing.
NOTE: It is not working for me (the preview is not themed), but
I'll update this post if I find a way.
At last, you'll be asked to name your account.
That is all the steps needed to start publishing! I will now guide you through the publishing process.
Publishing
Click on "Publish" or "Post draft to blog", depending on what you want to do.
You'll then see your post on as a node in your Content tree:
Congratulations!
You've successfully set up Umbraco and Windows Live Writer.
NOTE: You've guessed right. This post was written using WLW. :-)