Buck Anderson posted on September 16, 2009 12:55 :: 6371 Views
With Windows Live Writer and the metaPost module from ITT Crossing,, you can add photos and videos, format everything just so, and publish to your Ventrian News Article module directly from your own computer.
With Writer and metaPost, you can preview everything you’re adding to your news articles, to see how the fonts, spacing, colors, and images will look, before you publish.
Have you ever struggled creating images for your articles on your local computer and then needing to upload them for use on your portal?
I know I have. It becomes cumbersome to upload these photos to your portal using the DNN HTML editor.
With Window Live Writer it is fast and easy to make your photos look great on your blog. Insert them and apply cool borders and effects. You can even pull your photos together into an album—just select the style you want and Writer takes care of the rest. When you publish, Writer automatically saves your picture or album online and links them to your articles.
In the following lesson, we will see how easy it is to configure Writer to connect to your News Articles module using metaPost.
Getting Started.
Install Windows Live Writer to your local machine. You can find the free download and instructions at: http://download.live.com/writer.
Install metaPost to your portal following the instructions provided with the module.
Open Windows Live Writer and complete the wizard as shown below.
Next we will select other blog service and click next.
Next add the web address of your DotNetNuke portal (example: http://www.yourdomain.com). Enter the username and password of your DNN user account that has permission to add article entries and click next.
On the next screen select blog type Metaweblog API and in the remote posting URL box enter the web address as shown below using your portal domain address.
Next you should see a modal box that asks the following question.
Click yes. There is a chance that Writer will not be able to locate a theme. If this occurs simply click OK.
Next confirm your Blog nickname and click finish.
Next you will see the Windows Live Writer edit screen. Enter the title and your article content. You can preview your article, spell check, insert images, and perform word counts.
When you are satisfied with the results simply click publish. All of the content and images will be uploaded to your Ventrian News Articles module and your article post, on your portal, should open in a browser window for review or final editing.
The Ventrian News Articles provider for metaPost allows you to manage the excerpt summary, choose categories, publish dates, add pages, featured and secured options, and Draft or For approval options.
Oh, did I mention that I created this article post using Windows Live Writer and metaPost?
Built for DotNetNuke, metaPost 1.3.5 by IT Crossing. The metaPost product has several additional features including full Microsoft Word 2007 support. It currently has provider support for:
Ventrian News Articles 5.77
DotNetNuke Blog
DotNetNuke FAQs
DotNetNuke Text/HTML
ZLDNN DNNArticle 5.0+
Magic Content
Expandable Text/HTML
According to IT Crossing a future version will also include support for:
DNN Announcements module
DNN Forum module
DNN Professor metaPost Review.
Enjoy,
Buck