Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is a desktop-based application used for blogging. Commercial tools currently available for blogging usually only provide bare minimal features. Windows Live Writer offers solutions to all these problems! One of the major advantages of this tool is that it is a free open-source tool and anyone can download and use it. 

Blogs and Blogging

Before we have a look at the actual application, let’s re-cap what a blog is and what blogging is. Blog is short for weblog. The personal diary best explains the concept of blogs. Whenever you read a diary, you do so in a linear fashion going from the first to the last entry. A blog is like reading a diary backwards from the last page; you read the latest entries first.

Blogging is simply writing a blog. The text in a blog is the blog post. Blogs can include text, graphics, quoted text from other websites, pictures, link to other blogs, tables and even music and video clips. Many blogs provide comments or news on a particular subject, others function more like personal online diaries.
 
Who Can Create Blogs?

Do not worry if you do not have any special computer programming knowledge. Anyone who is familiar with the concept of blogging and with basic knowledge of the Internet can create a blog. You can either be a reader of the blog or the author. There is always a place to leave comments for the author so that you can let them know how you feel about the topic. You can build on an idea (thread) or an issue that arose in a blog post, the author then comments on it and you can again reply to that. The author should acknowledge your comment and maybe even update the post if the comment adds value.

Note: Before we proceed further, be sure you have a clear understanding of the difference between blogs and forums. Although they have the same concept, they are not the same. Blogs mainly focus on personal opinions and news. Discussion Boards (Forums, Message Boards, Bulletin Boards) on the other hand focus on collaboration, problem solving and decision-making. 

Getting Started

You can download Windows Live Writer from the Microsoft site. 

After you download it, install it on your machine and create a shortcut on the desktop.

Start Windows Live Writer