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Blog Writer FAQ

Setting up your Blog Writer

How do I set up my blog accounts?
What do I enter for the Zoundry ID?
What is the media repository and how do I set it up?
How can I check if my media repository FTP settings are correct?
What if I don't have an FTP server?
How do I switch from Blog's file upload feature (xml-rpc) to use FTP to upload images? New Info!

Using your Blog Writer

How do I get rid of the double line spacing when I press Enter key
What are the keyboard shortcuts?
How do I simplify the interface to show only the editor?
How do I insert a link ?
How do I create or insert a link to one of my published posts?
How do I edit a link?
How do I create an affiliate link?
What's the difference between a Zoundry product link and a regular link?
I can't find my product in the Zoundry Product Chooser - what can I do?
What does it mean to open a link in a new window?
How do I convert Amazon.com links in my earlier posts into Zoundry product links?
How do I create product links from my Amazon wishlist?
What are block quotes?
How do I remove block quote and or link formatting?
How do I insert an image?
How do I modify an inserted image?
What is the Sidebar?
What are tags?
How do I add content from Microsoft Word? New!
What are Preview Templates?

Setting up your Blog Writer

How do I set up my blog accounts?

Information on account setup can be found in the user guide.

What do I enter for the Zoundry ID?

If you have an account with the Zoundry service (upon invitation only for the beta), enter your username (your email address.) If you do not have an account, you can request one by clicking here. You can also go to our Charity List to select a charity to receive your commissions - enter the charity's Zoundry ID into your Blog Writer. Another option is to enter a Guest ID from a friend or organization to receive your commissions. Lastly, you can leave the Zoundry ID field blank and any commissions you earn will go into the Zoundry donation jar to help us with our expenses.

What is the media repository and how do I set it up?

The Blog Writer's media repository uploads any local images you insert in your blog to a remote FTP server that will host your images online. If you do not configure your media repository, any images that you insert in your blog may appear OK to you but will appear broken to anyone else. If you do not have an FTP server, you can either use your blog server's file upload feature (if available) or click here to see other options.

To configure your media repository, go to the Getting Started sidebar (access via View -> Sidebar -> Getting Started) or to the Tools menu and click on Media Repository. Fill out the fields shown and click OK. Once configured, the media repository will automatically upload any local images you place in your blog to the FTP server during the publishing process. The media repository settings are as follows:

The media repository settings are as follows:
Host: Your FTP server's host name or IP address.
Port: FTP Port number. Leave this blank to use the default port 21.
Username: Your FTP server login username.
Password: Your FTP server login password.
URL: The web location (URL) to where the images are stored. This must be a valid URL starting with "http://".
Path: The directory path to where are images are stored in your FTP account. (starts with a "/")

How can I check if my media repository FTP settings are correct?

Blog Writer version 0.9.104 and later allows you to test your Media Repository FTP settings. You must be online to test your settings. After entering your FTP settings, click on the Test Settings button. This will bring up the Media Repository Settings Test dialog and perform the following tests (using your settings) as shown below. Note: you must be online to use this feature.

(Click here to view a screen shot)

Test Phase	What it does	Possible Reasons for Failure
Connect to FTP Server	Connects to the ftp server using the given username and password	Invalid FTP server host name; Invalid username or password; FTP service not running on the server; no internet connection.
Get list of remote files	Attemps to get the file listings from the FTP Server	Your user account does not have permission.
Upload Test Image	Uploads a test image	Account does not have permission to put files; FTP server closed the internet connection.
Download image	Attemps to download the test image from your web site	The URL setting in incorrect; web server is not running; web server does not have permission to access the image; the FTP directory is not visible to the web server (i.e. not under the document root, public_html etc).
Verify download	Checks to see if the image downloaded was the same image that was uploaded during the test
Delete test image	Deletes the test image that was previously uploaded	Account does not have permission to delete the image file.

What if I don't have an FTP server?

If you don't have an FTP server to host your images online, you have three choices. First, you can sign up with an image hosting service like Ripway (free account), which allows you to upload image files from your PC. Alternatively, you can use the Zoundry Product Chooser in your Blog Writer to place hosted images into your blog, or manually add an image tag to your blog. See more detail on the various options below.

A. To use Ripway:
1. Go to www.ripway.com and sign up for an account.
2. Sign into your Ripway account, note your Web address at the top of the page under "My Account".
3. Go to the Media Repository page in your Blog Writer (Tools->Media Repository) and enter the following:
Host: ftphost.ripway.com
Port: 21
Username: your Ripway username
Password: your Ripway password
URL: your Web address from step 2 above
Path: /
Note: If you want to use a Ripway subfolder for your Media Repository, append the name of the subfolder at the end of your URL and Path followed by a "/". For example, "/subfolder/". However, you cannot use different subfolders for different blogs in the Blog Writer.

Important: You must connect to your free Ripway account at least once a month or else it will be deleted by Ripway and your media repository image tags will be broken. One easy way to keep your Ripway account active is to test the settings once a month.

B. You can also use the Zoundry Product Chooser to insert an image into your blog. These inserted images are hosted by Amazon so when a reader views your blog, the image is loaded from Amazon. We cannot guarantee that these images will always be available but they are a good temporary solution.

C. You can also manually add an image tag, which is a URL to any image that is already hosted online (such as www.flickr.com), using one of three methods:

1. Select the image and drag and drop it from your browser. If the image is hyperlinked, cut and paste it instead*, or
2. Right-click on the image in your browser, select copy and paste it into the Blog Writer, or
3. Select Insert Image Tag from the right-click menu (or Ctrl+Shift+M) and entering the URL of the image tag.

(Note: before inserting images from the Web, make sure you obtain permission from the copyright holder first. You should also ask permission from the person hosting the image site about using "direct links" to images on the hosted site.)

You can find the URL of an image tag by right-clicking on an image in the browser and selecting Properties. Find the location of the image and enter it into the URL field within the Insert Image Tag dialog box. The Alt Text field is optional text that the browser will display before it loads the image.

* If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can simply drag and drop any image tag regardless of whether it is hyperlinked or not.

How do I switch from Blog's file upload feature (xml-rpc) to use FTP to upload images

If you are currently using the file upload feature (e.g.xml-rpc) supported by the Blog to upload your images (and other files) and wish to switch to use FTP:

1. Bring up the Account Settings dialog via Tools->BlogAccountSettings menu option.
2. Select the account. This will display the blogs (found in this account) at the bottom right ("Blogs in Account;").
3. From "Blogs in Account" section, select the appropriate Blog and press the "Edit Blog Settings" button. (view screenshot).
4. From the "Edit Blog Settings" dialog, select FTP and press OK. (view screenshot).

Note: This setting is on a per Blog basis.

Back up

Using your Blog Writer

How do I get rid of the double line spacing when I press Enter key?

Starting with version 0.9.137, the Enter key behaviour has been changed to make it easier for us to transistion to producing semantically correct xhtml markup - specifically with regard to paragraph breaks.

Pressing Enter key starts a new paragraph (html <p></p> elements). Normally, most browsers including the editor visually separates consecutive paragraphs with a larger line spacing (unless overridden by CSS styles). If you wish to simply start a new line with in the same paragaph, then press Shift+Enter.

Pressing Shift+Enter inserts a line break (<br/>) within the same paragraph. This is equivalent to pressing Enter key on other text editors such as Notepad. We recommend that you do not use line breaks (Shift+Enter or <br/>) purely for layout reasons. Your Blog's template style should be used define the presentation of your markup.

What are the keyboard shortcuts?

Action	Shortcut
Open Post	Ctrl + O
Open HTML File	Ctrl + Shift + O
Save Post	Ctrl + S
Save Post as HTML File	Ctrl + Shift + S
Publish Post	Ctrl + P
Download Recent Posts	Ctrl + D
Bold (Strong)	Ctrl + B
Italic (Emphasize)	Ctrl + I
Underline	Ctrl + U
Insert Link	Ctrl + L
Insert Product Link	Ctrl + Shift + L
Insert Picture (file)	Ctrl + M
Insert Image Tag	Ctrl + Shift + M
Cut	Ctrl + X
Copy	Ctrl + C
Paste	Ctrl + V
Paste as HTML (formatted)	Ctrl + Shift + V
Undo	Ctrl + Z
Redo	Ctrl + Y
Run Spellcheck	F7
Find and or Replace	Ctrl + F

How do I simplify the interface to show only the editor

To show only the editor, close the sidebar by clicking on the 'x' button on the top right of the sidebar (or uncheck the sidebar item in the View menu). If you do not frequently use trackbacks and the calendar, then you can also hide this by toggling the '>>' button located in the far right corner of the tagwords field.

See screenshot of the simplified interface.

How do I insert a link?

If you want to create a hyperlink under a word or phrase in your blog, first highlight the text, then press the Insert Link button (Ctrl+L) or right click and select Insert Link. Enter the URL and choose whether you want the link to open in a new browser window.

Alternatively, here are some other ways to create links:

1. Drag and drop a URL from your browser to the Blog Writer's editor.
2. Copy a URL from your browser to your clipboard. From the editor, choose Create Link (Ctrl+L). The link should be already prepopulated from the clipboard.
3. Copy the URL from your browser and pasted directly into the editor.
4. In the case of local files, drag and drop the local files (e.g., mp3 files) from Windows into the editor.

Tagging:
If you want to insert a tagged link to tag spaces such as Technorati, Flickr, Del.icio.us and 43Things, or reference sites like Wikipedia or search engines like Google:

Select the text you want to link, right click and choose "Link to..." menu option.

To add a link to a tag space which is not supported currently through the Blog Writer:
1. Select the text you want to link.
2. Right click, choose Link to ... -> Custom tag space.
3. Enter your tag space URL, e.g., http://del.icio.us/tag.
4. The tag words are the text you had selected, and this is shown in the "Link Tag" section. Multi-word tags should be separated by a space, i.e., you do not need to use the "+" or "%20".

How do I create or insert a link to one of my published posts?

To insert a link to one of your published posts, you can either:
1. From the document sidebar, right click on the post and choose "Create a link to this post".
2) From the document sidebar, right click on the post and choose Entry Properties. From the Entry Properties dialogs you can create a link to either the post, an image within the post, or links within that post.

This inserts a link to the selected post at the current cursor position. If you had selected some text in the editor, then the selected text will be hyperlinked to this post.

How do I edit a link?

Click on the link in the editor, right click and select Edit Link Location. Edit the URL and choose whether you want the link to open in a new browser window. Note: you cannot edit a Zoundry product link.

If you want to edit the link text, you can make changes in the editor.

How do I create an affiliate link?

We give you three easy ways to create Zoundry product links to a wide range of products. Click here to see our current list of supported merchants and which link creation methods we offer for each one. (Note: You must be connected to the Internet in order to create product links using the Blog Writer.)

First, use our Zoundry Product Chooser to search and create links easily for a wide range of products:

1. Highlight the text where you want to place the link (be careful not to highlight any extra spaces.)
2. Right click on the highlighted text and select Link to Product (or press Ctrl+Shift+L).
3. Review the merchants and categories of search results in the Zoundry Product Chooser. Click on the plus sign to expand a merchant and/or category to see its items (click on the minus sign to collapse an expanded merchant or category.)
4. Click on any item to review its information and see a thumbnail image if available.
5. When you find the correct item, select any checkbox options and click OK.

Or, use our Link Converter to create individual product links manually for some of our merchants, before we add them to our Zoundry Product Chooser:

1. Go to the merchant's site and find the product.
2. Copy and paste (or drag and drop in Mozilla Firefox) the product page URL into the Blog Writer.
3. Right click on the link and select Convert (Merchant) link into a Product Link.
4. After the Blog Writer successfully formats the link, enter the text for the link where it says Enter Product Text and click OK.

Lastly, you can create affiliate links for general product types or entire categories at selected merchants. For example, if you wanted create an affiliate link to an entire product category, such as digital cameras, at Amazon, you would do the following:

1. Highlight the term "digital cameras" and right click.
2. Select Link to merchant store front -> Amazon.

When your readers click on the link, they will go to a page at Amazon showing all matching products. If a reader clicks and purchases any product on that list, then you would earn a commission on the sale.

What's the difference between a Zoundry product link and a regular link?

A product link is a specially formatted affiliate link created by Zoundry that has your Zoundry ID encoded. You earn commissions anytime someone clicks through one of your product links and purchases something at the merchant's site. A regular link does not contain the special information used to track click-throughs and purchases. You can only earn commissions through Zoundry product links.

I can't find my product in the Zoundry Product Chooser - what can I do?

First, make sure you are online. Our Blog Writer needs to communicate with our Server in order to search for matching products and create the product link. Second, make sure you highlighted the name of the product exactly without any extra spaces.

If you still can't find the product within the search results in the Product Chooser, try searching at any of our supported merchants directly. If you find the product, then copy and paste (or drag and drop in Mozilla Firefox) the product page URL into the Blog Writer. Right click on the link and select Convert (Merchant) link into a Product Link. This will launch the Product Chooser with the link URL as the search text. After the Blog Writer successfully formats the link, verify or enter text for the link where it says Enter Product Text and click OK.

Please be patient while we unify all of our supported merchants' product catalogs into the Zoundry Product Chooser search interface. If you have a product or merchant that you want us to add, send an email to feedback@zoundry.com and we will do our best to add it soon.

What does it mean to open a link in a new window?

A link normally loads a new web page in the same window as your blog. A reader would then have to page back to get back to your blog. If you select the option to open a link in a new window, it will instruct the reader's browser to load the web page in a separate window. This allows the reader to interact in the new window, for example purchase a product, while keeping your blog window open and visible.

How do I convert Amazon.com links in my earlier posts into Zoundry product links?

Right click on the link or linked text and select Convert Amazon.com link to a Product Link. You can do the same for existing links to product pages at our other supported merchants.

How do I create product links from my Amazon wishlist?

You can search for wish list item (by name or email) using the Product Chooser. Another options is, if you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can simply drag and drop your wishlist items into the Blog Writer. Or if you are using Internet Explorer, copy and paste the items into the Blog Writer. Then for both browsers, highlight the linked text for each item, right click and select Convert Amazon.com link to Product Link.

What are block quotes?

Block quotes are a formatting option that indents a selected passage of text on both sides to give it more visibility within a post. Many bloggers like to use block quotes for longer quotes, for example, an entire paragraph. To apply a block quote, select the text for the block quote, then right click and choose Apply Block Quote Formatting.

How do I remove block quote and or link formatting?

You must select the entire linked text of the block quote or link first and then right-click and select the appropriate Remove Formatting option.

How do I insert an image?

To insert images from your PC, you can either drag and drop an image from your desktop, or click on the Insert Picture File button (Ctrl+M) on the toolbar or from the right-click menu. When you publish your post, your Blog Writer's media repository will automatically thumbnail (place a small version of the image in your post and link to the full image) and upload both the thumbnails and full images to your remote image host. (Note: You must configure your media repository first or use your blog service's file upload feature if available.)

You can also insert images from the Web, called image tags, using one of three methods:

1. Select the image and drag and drop it from your browser. If the image is hyperlinked, cut and paste it instead*.
2. Right-click on the image in your browser, select copy and paste it into the Blog Writer.
3. Select Insert Image Tag from the right-click menu (or Ctrl+Shift+M) and entering the URL of the image tag.
(Note: before inserting images from the Web, make sure you obtain permission from the copyright holder first.)

You can find the URL of an image tag by right-clicking on an image in the browser and selecting Properties. Find the location of the image and enter it into the URL field within the Insert Image Tag dialog box. The Alt Text field is optional text that the browser will display before it loads the image.

* If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can simply drag and drop any image tag regardless of whether it is hyperlinked or not.

How do I modify an inserted image?

You can edit images by right-clicking on the image and selecting Picture Properties. This will bring up a dialog box showing supported image properties, including alt text, alignment, and the html width and height attributes. Alternatively, you can change an image size in the editor by clicking on the image, selecting one of the image handles around the image, and stretching it as needed.

If you change the image size using Picture Properties, then a new thumbnail will automatically be generated. If you change the image size by stretching, then you should manually re-thumbnail by selecting Re-Thumbnail Picture from the right-click menu.

You can also change the margin and border style from the Picture Properties menu. To add space around the image:

1. Right click on the image and choose Picture Properties.
2. Select the Style tab.
3. Enter 2 for the left, top and bottom margins. Enter 5 for right margin. (Assuming left alignment.)
4. Optional: enter 1 for the border width.

What is the Sidebar?

The Sidebar is a window that you can choose to display on the left side of the Blog Writer. You can select from three different Sidebars by going to View -> Sidebar name:

1. Getting Started - a shortcut to the Settings options that shows what you have and haven't configured.
2. Check for Updates - a convenient way to check if any newer versions of the Blog Writer are available for download and see what's new from Zoundry.
3. Blog Entries - a list of your saved drafts and posts for easy browsing and editing.

To close the Sidebar, click on the X at the top right of the sidebar window. To switch quickly between sidebars, you can click on the down arrow next to the close button and select from the pull-down menu.

What are tags?

Tags are keywords that you can add to your post to help other people find them in blog search engines such as Technorati and social bookmarks sites such as del.icio.us. Your posts are grouped with other similarly tagged posts so you can get more visibility within these services and receive more traffic to your blog. You can also use this feature to create ad-hoc groups at these services if you and your friends use the same tag word, and many services allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed for a specific tag.

Normally you would need to know HTML to add tags to your post, but the Blog Writer allows you to add tags easily to a number of tag services. First select the tag service from the pull-down menu below the title in the editor toolbar. (Technorati is the default option.) Next, enter your tag words with a comma separating each tag. For example, if you have two tags such as "Zoundry" and "Blog Writer" (excluding quotes), enter them as "Zoundry, Blog Writer" (excluding quotes). Note the comma separating the two tags.

You can also click on the button to the right of the tag field to select from tags that you have used previously.

The tagwords added in the toolbar (or in the Publish dialog) will appear at the bottom of your post once it is published.

How do I add content from Microsoft Word?

When Microsoft Word generates html content, most of it is tailored towards working with MS Word and Blog Writer may not handle the content correctly. Specifically clipboard Cut and Paste may not work (even if it seems to look OK), and we do not recommend it - as Blog Writer will not be able to load the content (technically speaking, load it into a valid xhtml in memory DOM).

However, (if you must use MS Word) there is an alternate approach to import Microsoft Word content using Blog Writer (v0.9, build 137 or later):

1. Save the Microsoft Word document as a html file to a temporary location. When saving as a html file, make sure you choose "Web Page, Filtered" for type in the Save-As dialog.
2. Using Blog Writer, choose File->OpenHtmlFile (or Ctrl+Shift+O) and select the html file you saved from MS Word. This should load up the MS Word generated file after Blog Writer cleans it up and passes it through Tidy. Images included in MS Word will resolved and included for posting.

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Support

Zoundry Buttons

Blog Writer FAQ

Setting up your Blog Writer

Using your Blog Writer

Other Questions

Setting up your Blog Writer

How do I set up my blog accounts?

What do I enter for the Zoundry ID?

What is the media repository and how do I set it up?

How can I check if my media repository FTP settings are correct?

What if I don't have an FTP server?

How do I switch from Blog's file upload feature (xml-rpc) to use FTP to upload images

Using your Blog Writer

How do I get rid of the double line spacing when I press Enter key?

What are the keyboard shortcuts?

How do I simplify the interface to show only the editor

How do I insert a link?

How do I create or insert a link to one of my published posts?

How do I edit a link?

How do I create an affiliate link?

What's the difference between a Zoundry product link and a regular link?

I can't find my product in the Zoundry Product Chooser - what can I do?

What does it mean to open a link in a new window?

How do I convert Amazon.com links in my earlier posts into Zoundry product links?

How do I create product links from my Amazon wishlist?

What are block quotes?

How do I remove block quote and or link formatting?

How do I insert an image?

How do I modify an inserted image?

What is the Sidebar?

What are tags?

How do I add content from Microsoft Word?

Other Questions

I published a blog with a picture and it seemed to work, but from a browser on a different machine, the image is broken. What's wrong?

Why are prices and product information at Amazon sometimes different from the information shown in the Zoundry Product Chooser?

When I saved my draft post, the Blog Writer didn't ask me for a save file location - why not?

How do I setup FeedDemon to use its BlogThis News Item function?

How do I setup RSSOwl to use the Blog News function?

How do I setup GreatNews to use its BlogThis function?