Mar 30
xPollinate – Windows Live Writer Cross Post Plugin
xPollinate is a Windows Live Writer plugin that enables you to cross post your blog entries to other blogs, as well as other social networking sites via Ping.FM. Use it to increase your exposure, reach more audiences, or even to create backups of your blog posts.
You can download the plugin from the associated CodePlex site, or from the Windows Live Writer Plugin Gallery here.
This plugin is based on another CodePlex plugin project (http://www.codeplex.com/clarius/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=6626) by Daniel Cazzulino, but with additional features and functionality.
Version 1.0.0.4 includes the following features:
- Cross post to multiple blogs at the same time
- Choose blogs to post to at cross post time
- Set plugin defaults through the options dialog, and override at posting time.
- Ability to turn comments and trackbacks (pings) on/off at the cross posted blog
- Add header or footer html to each cross posted entry
- Cross post to Ping.FM
- Supports triggers and services
- Post using blog, microblog, or status methods, simultaneously or individually
Toth on Twitter
April 11th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Hi i am about to load in this plugin for LW something i have been looking for for some time now.
My ? is can it be possible to make it somehow work with the WP plugin All in one SEO pack.
So within your plugin it lets me fill in the extra fields the ALL in one SEO pack adds to each WP post page. like.
Title:
Description:
Keywords (comma separated):
This way it is added into the All in one SEO extra post areas for each new post or page??
Thanks
April 11th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Ok i loaded it in and i do not see it in LW???
Anything special i need to do to see it or make it work?
I am using the current version of LW Build 14.0.8050.1202
I would love to be able to post to many blogs at the same time.
April 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Hi EddieM,
That isn’t the current version of Live Writer. The most current version is 14.0.8064.206. You can get it if you go to http://download.live.com. Just run through the installer again and it’ll upgrade Live Writer. You should see the plugin after that, but please let me know if you don’t.
It seems that this plugin keeps looking for a specific version of Live Writer, even though I tell it not to. I’ve posted a thread in the Live Writer developer forums about this, but so far have gotten no response.
Regarding your other question, it won’t be able to add those extra fields to Word Press. This plugin uses the same mechanism to post that Live Writer does itself, and Live Writer doesn’t yet have a way to set extra fields of data when posting to Word Press.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Hi thanks when i did a check fpr updates it says i had the current version.
I did the update and not your plug is showing up but i am having a problem
It is not uploading the image to the other website.
Here is the LW site it is first going to.
http://lasvegasweddingsphotography.com/ you can see the photo of the guitar player.
Now using your plugin i sent the same post to this site and i get no image.
http://atmoreweddingphotography.com/
?? any clue on this?
Thanks
April 11th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Interesting, I haven’t seen that before. Are you using a certain kind of image plugin for Live Writer?
My plugin looks for any relative urls in the source post (i.e. “/images/file.png”) and makes them absolute pointing to the source blog (e.g. “http://sourceblog.com/images.file.png”). It doesn’t actually upload any image files to the destination blog.
It looks like it is posting the local path to your images (file:///Documents and Settings/…).
I’ll look into it…
April 11th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
OK. I think I’ve fixed this. There is a new build here:
http://xpollinate.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=25469#DownloadId=63674
You can see this post with images here:
http://www.lifeonplanetgroove.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/10/how-to-wall-mount-an-hp-touchsmart-iq800/
…has been cross posted here:
http://friedtothu.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-wall-mount-hp-touchsmart-iq800_11.html
…and via Ping.FM here:
http://adamtoth.tumblr.com/post/95371524/how-to-wall-mount-an-hp-touchsmart-iq800
Thanks for the feedback, let me know if that fixes it.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
test
April 12th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I can not leave a long blog post to you about your plugin it will not work i have been trying many times it just shows up bland so i am going to try and post it in parts.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
The new version working for the images now you can see the two links i posted before.
BUT the next problem that needs to be fixed is the categories and Tags look at the main post and you can see it shows categories and tags but in the cross post it now has no categories or tags making it not show up for the categories i would need it to be in or for the tag it needs to show up under.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
One other thing – not sure if this can be fixed – when i make a cross post and then re-edit the main post and repost it it works 100% in LW for the main blog but for the cross post it will not replace or update the cross post it just makes a new post so you then end up with two of them. Can this be fixed to?
April 12th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
This is just not working i can not post anything long at all do you have a e-mail address i can use???
April 13th, 2009 at 1:05 am
Hi EddieM,
Sorry for the comment not showing up. My blog is set to mark a post for moderation if it has more than a couple hyperlinks in it. It hasn’t been a problem so far but I’ve made a change that should help that.
Anyway, I’ve added your requests into the project site, and when I have some time in the next week I’ll try and work on those.
I haven’t had a need to use categories or tags for my cross posts, since I post to totally different blog engines, which have different levels of support for tags/categories/labels. I’ll see what I can do.
The duplicate post when editing is just how it works right now, the same as the WLW Cross Post plugin this plugin is based on. I’ll look into this one as well.
Thanks again for the feedback, keep it coming.
April 13th, 2009 at 1:13 am
If you register for an account at CodePlex, you can vote on these issues and also request more changes and features here:
http://xpollinate.codeplex.com/WorkItem/List.aspx
June 9th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
[...] funny how an Idea I roughly duct taped together about a year ago is now done much better by someone [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 6:23 am
hey guy, seems the WLM has upgraded to a new version 14.0.8089.726 days ago.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Thanks! I’ll post a new version of xPollinate ASAP.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Love your tool but does not work with the current version of WLR. When can we expect an update. Are Donations taken?
October 12th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hi everyone, sorry for the delay. I posted a new version, 1.0.0.3, that works with the new version of LiveWriter.
http://xpollinate.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34348
January 20th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Live Writer is asking for a ping.fm “API Key”. Ping.fm says that it no longer uses api key for users only needed for app developers. Please help would like to use you app to cross post. Thanks
January 20th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hi Joel,
I may have worded it poorly. It is your application key at Ping.FM:
http://ping.fm/key/
Enter that key, and you should be good to go.
February 17th, 2010 at 4:43 am
How I can get the rss from http://www.Indiavision.com to be picked directly by ping.fm for posting to windows and orkut?
March 26th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Hi Adam,
Love the plugin! I was just wondering would you be working in support for hellotxt.com services too? Thanks again for the awesome work!
March 26th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Hi Rill,
I do have plans to support HelloTxt. Thanks for the suggestion, it isn’t going to be that hard to implement. Check back soon for an update.
March 31st, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Hi Adam,
That sounds wonderful! I look forward to it. Now I know this sounds like I’m pushing my luck, but dont ban me yet! I was also wondering if you’d be able to make a plugin for Pixelplus.com it’s very similar in nature to ping.fm/hellotxt, only difference is it’s mainly for posting images/videos to multiple blog/imagehost providers.
I’m not sure how difficult it’ll be to implement a system similar to, say, flickr4writer but I thought I’d throw it out here and see what you thought. Thanks again for listening!
April 1st, 2010 at 1:17 am
Whoops! sorry, thats supposed to be PixelPipe.com not PixelPlus. This is what happens when you go a week without coffee
April 21st, 2010 at 2:07 am
good.
This is what happens when you go a week without coffee
April 28th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Great plugin; I use it often. But I have one issue… I often post an article directly at a blog, then decide to cross-post. I open the article in WLW, then click xpollinate. I receive the warning “Current blog post must be published before cross-posting.” Even if I republish the article from WLW, I still receive the warning. I suppose I could just post all articles from WLW, but then I wouldn’t have access to all of the unique publishing functionality in each site.
April 28th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I hear ya Bob G. That bothers me also. This should be a pretty easy fix, so check back.
May 11th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Hi Adam,
Would you spare some time to fix Bob request? I need it too
Thanks in advance!
May 20th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Hi Ferry and Bob G. I have a fix for this, would you be willing to test? If so, leave a new comment here and fill out a valid email address (it won’t display on the site anywhere, only I can see it) and I’ll mail you a link to an installer.
May 20th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Hey may I quote some of the content from this entry if I link back to you?
May 21st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Hello,
I just came across this site and loved the thought. I installed it on LW, then I got a popup saying my LW wasn’t current. I downloaded the new version, and now I can’t find the latest version of XPollinate at all! I even did an un-install and re-install. It still won’t show. Can you help me?
May 21st, 2010 at 4:35 pm
A new version of LiveWriter must have just come out. I’ll recompile against the new version and put up a new build of xPollinate tonight.
May 22nd, 2010 at 1:17 am
Hi Adam
I updated WLW yesterday and I can confirm xpollinate no longer works. Can you drop me a mail when you have released new version? It is a great tool and I am missing it already.
Cheers
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:26 am
When posting a blog that is in Chinese language, all Chinese characters become garbled.
May 24th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Uploaded version 1.0.0.4, which works with WLW 14.0.8117.416. You can get it at http://xpollinate.codeplex.com.
This release also includes an updated fix to enable xpollinate on posts that are opened directly from a blog.
NOTE: If you open a post directly from a blog, and then edit and add photos/videos/file attachments, the urls to those items may be incorrect if you use xpollinate and don’t publish back to your blog first.
May 24th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Hi Peng,
Other users have reported Unicode issues. I may not be able to fix that, as I don’t have a way to check or specify the encoding of the posts via the methods that Live Writer gives me.
May 24th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Hi Adam,
Posted an error report in xPollinate discussion on CodePlex.
May 25th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Hi Andy just downloaded new version and it is now showing again in WLW. I thought all was well untill I went to post and got an unexpected error which I have copeid below.
Hopefully this is just an over sight and an easy fix at your end. On another note do you design software full time? Can you drop me an email I may be interested to use your services if they are available? Thanks
Invalid Cast Exception
ystem.InvalidCastException: [A]WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.PostEditorForm cannot be cast to [B]WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.PostEditorForm. Type A originates from ‘WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor, Version=14.0.8117.416, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35′ in the context ‘Default’ at location ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.dll’. Type B originates from ‘WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor, Version=14.0.8117.416, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35′ in the context ‘LoadFrom’ at location ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins\WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.dll’.
at Toth.WLW.Plugins.XPollinate.CreateContent(IWin32Window dialogOwner, String& content)
at WindowsLive.Writer.PostEditor.ContentSources.ContentSourceManager.PerformInsertion(IContentSourceSite sourceSite, ContentSourceInfo contentSource)
May 25th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Thanks for the reports. I have uploaded 1.0.0.5 on CodePlex. Please try it and post results.
May 27th, 2010 at 4:24 am
working great so far. Cheers
May 27th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Hi Andy
Just had a proper play with it and I am affraid there are still some bugs. I am getting error messages all the time trying to connect to my blogs wven when not using your plug in. If I switch it off the error messages go away. When I initialy click the Xpollinate link for a moment it tells me WLW has stoped working then it will randomly post to some of my blogs and not the others. Here is a sample of the messages I am getting. The blogs and ping fm are all set up properly.
Checking blogs…
Posting to 4 Oil and Gas Job… Done…
Posting to 4oilandgasjobs… Done…
Posting to The Oil and Gas Job…
Error…
Network Connection Error – Error attempting to connect to blog at:
https://oilandgaspeople.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php
The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.
Checking Ping.FM…
Posting to Ping.FM blogs… Error…
The request was aborted: The operation has timed out.
Posting to Ping.FM Microblogs… Error…
The request was aborted: The operation has timed out.
June 6th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Adam,
First off I want to say you did an excellent job with the xPollinate plugin! I use many social networks and I am really trying to spread my blog! What better way than making posts to all my social networks and linking them back to my blog. So thank you so much for that! It helps a ton.
But I do have a question that I hope you can answer. When submit a post to Facebook and Tumblr the characters ex: ( ‘ & # etc) are shown as � and I am not sure why. This is an excerpt of my latest blog to give you an example:
“Next go to �Account Security�. It won�t be opened like it is here. You will have to click �change� to expand it.”
Any thoughts on this? Your help is much appreciated! Thank you.
-Aaron
July 19th, 2010 at 11:10 am
This looks great…is there any way to add functionality to support spinner syntax like {text1|text2|text3} so unique versions can be submitted?
Thanks.
July 26th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Thank you so much for this. Thanks for sharing it.