Monday, April 26, 2010

How to Synchronize LiveWriter’s blog drafts using LiveMesh

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I have a myriad of environments that I am working with.

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Windows XP Pro, Vista x64, Win 7 Ultimate x64, Win 7 Home Premium x86, Win Server 2008 R2.

Throughout the day I am in any one of these environments. I would get an idea for a blog post, then I start to write a draft.  Next thing you know, I am out to do something else so I save the blog post as a draft and exit live writer.  However, there are times when I could dedicate a couple of minutes to continue that draft (Dr's appt which are the norm and not the exception lately.. :(.   Come to find out that I've written the latest updates on a different computer.  I began to research on the practicality of using an online storage. 

Experimented with Dropbox for a little bit. It works ok for single files, but it is not very flexible for blogging.

So, I have started to use Live Mesh to keep all of my drafts, that under different locations, into a single repository. The only problem with Live Writer is that it does not allow you to specify the location in which to save the drafts/posts (Build 14.0.8089.726)

The trick to get Live Mesh to synch all of the content,  is to find the path where the drafts are stored.  I have compiled a handy table of paths for the OS'es I've used:

Environment Path
XP Pro C:\Documents and Settings\arnulfo\My Documents\My Weblog Posts
   
Vista C:\Users\Arnulfo\Documents\My Weblog Posts
   
Win 7 C:\Users\arnulfo\Documents\My Weblog Posts

 

Then all you have to do is setup your Live Mesh folder to point to these locations.

Go to your Mesh folders, Manage Folders

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Then when you set the folder in Live Mesh, specify the correct path location depending on the OS you are running.  For i.e. this the default location for Win 7

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I change it to

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That’s it.!  Now if you go to the Live Mesh Folders and check the synch settings

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you will see all of the devices where my blog draft/post will be synchronized.

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happy blogging… :)