The Coding Paparazzi

When you use Windows Live Writer (WLW) with Blogger, WLW will default all the pictures you download to a single Picasa album. We will see in this article how to configure WLW so that the images for each article will be published into separate albums.

INTRODUCTION

At this moment, I have only first article published (Coding Paparazzi - Title menu on two lines for Joomla & Artisteer) and I'm already buried beneath the images. There are of course all these screenshots I took here and there for what to be my first article as well as for the followings but there is also a place where the images have spread like hot cakes and this place is called Picasa. Although that this first article that I wrote - this one being the second - does not contain more than fifteen images, I find myself with more than one hundred images in the Picasa album created by WLW:

And as you can see, many of these images are duplicates and all this, with only one single article! I can hardly imagine what it would when I will a few dozen articles - if ever I go that far, of course! I don't know about you but I guess that if you reading this article, it's probably because you are yourself in exactly the same situation. Even if we can erase those images that have become redundant and move others into new albums without risk of breaking the HTML links of the blog (the links created by WLW don't use the album names, only their ID), this is obviously a task work we would could spare ourself of, without counting the risk of accidentally erasing images that are still useful.

Moreover, the maximum number of images per album in Picasa seems to be 500. As the links posted by WLW use the ID and not the Picasa album, simply renaming the album "Windos Live Writer" under another name - like "Windows Live Writer 01" for example - will be sufficient to restart a new sequence of 500 but obviously this is not is an ideal solution.  (Reference: "Revitize - WLW upload image error", "Blogger.com Issue | Google Groups"). We could of course upload these images separately and then link them manually one by one or we could use something like the Picasa plugin for WLW (Windows Live Gallery - Picasa Image Plugin) but again, this requires additional time and furthermore, will prevent us from the image manipulation tools of WLW; which are precisely one of its strengths.
 

METHOD

When we publish our pictures to another service than Picasa, FTP for example, WLW has no problem to separate them by article into different repertories; it has therefore the ability to do so already builtin. In searching the Internet for a solution to this problem, I came across the following articles which refer to the registry key "fileUploadNameFormat":

• Revitize - Another Revit Blog: Windows Live Writer upload image error
• Windows Live Writer Image Posting Error
• Picture upload fails due to missing "/" in url
• ZuckerBlog: April 2008 Archives "Editing file upload locations with Live Writer"

By adding this fileUploadNameFormat key in the registry below the branch HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows Live \ Writer \ Weblogs \ {blog-id} \ UserOptionOverrides \ and where {log-id} is the blog's GUID as it has been registered under WLW, it is possible to redefine the default behavior of WLW when it uploads new images to Picasa. If you have multiple blogs, you will obviously have several {log-id} in the registry but by browsing the list, you can easily find the one that you are interested into by observing the properties at the right:

By looking at the BlogName property on the right of the above picture, you can see that the key {11ff...} is associated with the blog named "blogger - Sauvegarde - Sylvain Lafontaine (11)". In the same way, the HomePageUrl property give us its home page.

Quick little trick: when you have multiple blogs enregistred with WLW, it is convenient to add at the end of the name of each blog the first letters of its GUID; like you can see below.  This way, you can find their associated registry quickly. This is useful not only for redefining the default name of the Picasa albums but also for other things such as fixing the theme preview in WLW; which will be the subject of a forthcoming article.

To return to the new registry key to add, it must be of type String, with the exact name fileUploadNameFormat (note the distinction between uppercase and lowercase as it is important!) and it must be created under the key UserOptionOverrides of the corresponding blog; as it is illustrated below. In these screenshots, the key fileUploadNameFormat has already been created so you can see exactly where it should be made but of course, you won't see it on your machine until you have created it.

You can use the following tokens to define the name of the new albums:

• {PostTitle}
• {PostRandomizer}
• {Randomizer}
• {FileName}
• {AsciiFileName}
• {AsciiFileNameWithoutExtension}
• {FileExtension}
• {WindowsLiveWriter}

This property must be of type String and it must end with a "/" as illustrated above. Excerpt for the tokens, all the rest of the string will be transcribed verbatim to the name of the new album. You can use special characters like blank spaces, underscores, hyphens or even other "/".  The two most interesting tokens to use are {PostTitle} and {PostRandomizer}.  With the others, you may find yourself with a photo album created for each image. Here is an example of what I use personally:

"Brouillons" here is for designating my private blog "Brouillons" and you can see the final result in Picasa; where a new album with the name "Brouillon - WLWBloggerPicasaetlesAlbums 5C20" (the original title was in french) has been automatically created for this article:

Obviously, the name "Brouillon - WLWBloggerPicasaetlesAlbums 5C20" is not the prettiest and the title has been stripped from its blank spaces and other special characters such as the comma ((the original title was in french and it was "WLW, Blogger, Picasa et les Albums") but nothing prevents you from renaming it to your liking after that. Remember that with the type of link created by WLW to Blogger, the name of the album which is a linked image does not matter and you can rename these albums or move an image from one album to another with no impact on the blog itself and that the main point here is that each article get its own album in Picasa when published by WLW.

Also, when you change the key "fileUploadNameFormat", it is not necessary to restart WLW each time before testing it. By adding a new image, so you can quickly make several tests to see what you like best. For those who prefer not to forage in the registries base, there are two alternatives for creating or changing the registry key "fileUploadNameFormat". The first is to use a custom configuration file WLWManifest.XML to redefine the default properties of a blog to WLW. This technique will be the subject of a separate article as the file wlwmanifest.xml can be used for many other purposes.

The third method is to use the Writer Tweak Helper program by Joe Cheng, available here: WriterTweakHelper.exe. Download and run this program (it does not require to be installed but .NET is required) and you can then add, modify or delete any properties of the branch UserOptionsOverrides for each of your blogs without having to open the registries base:

LAST TIP 

Finally, a little trick: When you create a new blog, it is easy to forget to set the registry key for name the Picasa albums. If you already have an album "Windows Live Writer, you will then end up with your new images in this album, something that can be annoying if it contains several hundred of images. So even if you intend not to use this album anymore and to group your pictures by article, it will still be useful to change the name of the album "Windows Live Writer" to something else like "Windows Live Writer 01". That way, if you forget to set the key when you create a new blog on Blogger, your images will still be uploaded to a new album - "Windows Live Writer" - instead of the old one.