Windows Live Writer

I posted awhile back about enlarging photos and have since found a much better method for posting to your blog and loading pics . Windows Live Writer. All you need to do is get this downloaded onto your computer and you will be in blog heaven, loading pics faster than you can snap your fingers, editing, changing fonts quick and easy, and even moving your pics around at will. And you’ll wonder what took you so long to find this wonderful tool. I have to thank Joni, from Cote de Texas for turning me on to Windows Live Writer a few months ago. She nudged me over to it and I haven’t looked back.

No more changing codes to enlarge pics, no more loading pics in order so that they can still be clickable to enlarge. With Windows Live Writer, you can move things around as you wish before it gets published. You will love it! So, what are you waiting for, go here and download and start blogging. This is the screen from the Windows Live Writer site:

And come back and tell me how much you love it too. Be careful when you are downloading it to only choose the Windows Live Writer portion, you really don’t need the other Windows Live features. You will need to attach your blog to it once it’s loaded and then you’re good to go. The only glitch so far is that picture storage can sometimes cause an error message when you try to publish or save a post to your blog. When that happens, it may say error 500, which might mean that you are over your picture storage with Blogger and Picasa (where pics are stored). After 2 years of blogging, I just recently had to pay for a year of extra storage for my pics ($20 per year), but that’s what happens when you post lots of pics like I do. It’s worth it! I also recently got another error message and Joni helped me with that one. She suggests that you go in and rename the last album in your picture storage file and that takes care of the error. In case you don’t know where your picture storage area is in Picasa, click on Dashboard, then My Accounts, and then click on Picasa. That is where all your pics are automatically stored in Blogger.

So, this is a tip from me to you and I hope you new bloggers will take note and try it out. It will make your blog life SO much easier. I only wish I had started using it months ago.

While we’re talking about new bloggers, let me take this opportunity to give you a few other tips on blogging. Many of you have asked me over the months about better ways to get your blog out there. I really don’t have any great advice, except to be yourself, write about what you love, and go and visit lots of blogs and comment. Those blogs will get to know you the more you put yourself out there and then they’ll come back to see you too. I think the best thing I can tell anyone is to be yourself. Pure and simple, a real personality is your best asset. I have been blogging 2 years now and it’s only been by word of mouth and networking that my blog has grown to where it is now. I’ve never had a big feature or any sort of story that has promoted my blog all that much.

Another thing that really continues to be a pet peeve of mine and that I’ve mentioned before is the feature of Letter Verification on blogs and I continue to see it on a lot of new blogs. Some will argue with me on this one, but people, I’m here to tell you, you absolutely do NOT need to keep this feature turned on at your blog. If you feel the need for higher security or to control spam, then leave on Comment Moderation, which means you will moderate each and every comment before it hits your blog, but please, please, please turn off the Letter Verification thingy. It’s highly annoying to your readers and takes SO much longer for them to leave comments. You will not find any big blogs out there that have this feature, so please take that suggestion in the manner it is meant to be taken and consider turning it off. I’ve had a few problems over the last 2 years with some ugly spam at my blog, but it has been very sporadic and not enough to warrant me turning it on. I’ve had to turn on Moderate Comments one time only for just a couple of days. You have the power to delete any rude comments at your blog, so use it.

I see so many new blogs out there these days and I hope these suggestions will help many of you get your blogs going and growing!

Next Wednesday, I have a very exciting GIVEAWAY going on and I promise, you will not want to miss it. Some great things that you will ALL love!