Live Writer / Blogger ... MY Workaround

Friday, 29 May 2015
Gulf Waters RV Resort — Port Aransas, Texas

I won't rehash the Blogger/Google/Live Writer (LW) debacle ... it's been discussed, and discussed, and discussed ad nauseam already. If you haven’t already been to it … here’s the thread of the outcries from around the world since the LW/Blogger connection was severed on May 26.  You can comment on it, or subscribe to it to follow the progression of the matter.

Nor will I go into the “integrity” of continuing to use Blogger to post my stories … corporate wheels turn too slowly for me to sit by and leave my stories untold.  Everyone is entitled to their opinions; I prefer to make my stand over matters that are more critical to me.  Suffice to say, I spent all day yesterday looking at alternatives — including WordPress — and none of them suits me at the moment.  Enough said.

(By the way, there have been posts and tweets since late last night that Microsoft and Google are working the issue now.  We’ll see!)

This post is about MY LW workaround, which a few people have expressed an interest in.  If not interested, or you are using Blogger’s own posting interface and are satisfied with it, stop reading here.  I have been writing my posts in LW pretty much the way I describe below ... including previewing in Blogger before finalizing the upload with the submit button. So really, the copy/paste is the only additional step in my workflow.

There won’t be any pics or screenshots in this post.  Not because I’m having any problems using them.  I simply have very little free time as we prepare to get on the road on Monday; so it’s just a time management issue.  If you want to see proof that what I wrote below works, check out this post in my Two to Travel blog.  The whole thing was written and posted as described.  If there are any formatting issues, I can’t see them.

To clear something up … as I’ve sensed some confusion in some of the comments I’ve read.  LW is not another blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.  It is an offline, standalone tool that allows bloggers to write posts in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format that is easier to manage than Blogger’s comparatively clunky user interface.  It works with almost any platform in the blogosphere.

CAVEAT: for this to work, your photos must already be uploaded to a photo hosting site.  I use SmugMug, but there are others out there from which you can get links to your uploaded photos. Stop reading if your photos aren't already uploaded to the web, or you're not willing to do so.

[The LW tabs are all at the left bottom of the screen.]

1. Write your post in LW’s edit tab as you normally do, saving the post as you go along to your drafts [disk icon in the toolbar in case you have not been using it].
2. Leave empty lines where you think you want photos; type a placeholder like PHOTO to make it easy to find the empty spots in the source tab later.
3. Go to your web-hosted photos and get the link for the photo you want [unless you’re a SmugMug user, I can’t help you here … but if you are and need help, drop me a note]
4. Go to the source tab in LW; find the empty line where you want the photo to appear; copy and paste the link over the word you typed as a placeholder [PHOTO in the example].
5. Repeat step 4 as needed.
6. Return to the edit tab to resize, center, and otherwise format your photos.
7. Go to the LW preview tab to make sure all looks well; edit as necessary in the edit tab.
8. Go to the source tab and copy all.
9. Go to your blog and open a new post window; make sure the tab at the top reads HTML and not compose … this is critical.
10. Paste the text you copied from LW … DO NOT go to the compose tab as this will mess up your formatting.
11. Add your post title and labels (if you use them).
12. Use the preview button [to the right of the publish button] to make sure everything copied over OK.
13. Click the submit button.
14. If you need to edit the post for some reason, you can do so on the HTML tab … just search and carefully replace whatever it is you want to edit; or do your edits in LW and then repeat the copy/paste from there into the post on Blogger and re-publish.

P.S. There’s also an option to add photos in Blogger’s HTML tab, which works quite well, but I won’t go into that since it is not my preferred way of managing my photos.