Windows Live Writer Problem – How to Retain Dashes in Image File Names
When you publish blog posts from Windows Live Writer and attach images – the dashes, spaces and underscores are stripped from the image file name. For example: If you attach an image with a file name “my-post-image.png” the end result is “mypostimage.png”. (when you upload or publish the post in your blog).
This file name of the resulting image has the following disadvantages:
1. Search engines prefer images whose file name contains words separate by dashes or underscores.
2. Words in image file names separated by dashes are easier to read.
There are alternative ways to solve this problem. You can upload the images from WordPress post editing panel or upload the image to your image upload folder using FTP tools. Then you can copy the image URL and use the image in Windows Live writer from “Insert image from URL” function.
Both the above methods require some extra effort and thus you would want a quick an easy solution. That’s when Rightupload comes to the rescue.
After you have installed the application, open the program interface and go to “Tools > options”. Click on “New server” and enter the FTP details of your blog and the folder where you store the images of blog posts.
Remember to enter the URL mask as: http://yoursite.com/foldername/$file
Switch to the Advanced tab of the program and hit “Enable context menu” option. Make sure you keep “When finished, close Rightupload immediately” checkbox selected.
You are all done. Compose a new blog post in Windows Live writer and when you want to attach an image, follow the steps mentioned below:
1. Right click the image and select the image upload folder of your blog from “Send to” context menu.
2. As soon as you select the RightUpload icon, the image is uploaded in default image upload folder of your blog and the URL is copied to Windows Clipboard.
3. Open Windows Live Writer, click the “Insert Image icon” and hit ” Ctrl + V ” in the Picture URL field to attach the image in the blog post. You are done.
When you publish the post or save it as draft, the dashes won’t be stripped from the image file name anymore. Tip: Send screenshots, files and folders to FTP from desktop.
This is such an amazing guide….
I have already made a mistake of not creating a separate FTP server for blog post images… hence all my images go to “wp-content/uploads”. Damn.
And this is why when my hosting server crashed. I got back post from database backup but lost all images. Even though I have all the images in my pc its of no use becoz of this live writer problem.
Is there any way to backup the image (uploads) folder automatically (like create a dummy on a different place).
@POPULAR WEB GEEK: Yes, there is a way to do that. First you have to backup all the images in yourhard drive . Second, create the upload folder where you want the images to go (img.yoursite.com/posts/ for example). Now you have to run an SQL query which will replace the source of all images in each and every single post from the earlier to the current one.
It’s a bit tricky and should be done with extreme care. I will come up with a guide on that after proper testing. Thanks for the comment.
Thanks a lot. This had been bugging me for quite sometime. I’ll try it when I get home. :)
@Popular Web Geek Thats OK. Get it done now. I’m not sure if the image backup that you had asked can be done automatically. But you can take the backup. Follow this post by Amit. I hope it helps as we ourselves have tried this. Feel free to ask if there’s a problem.
@Sid Ya that has been screwing our SEO all the time. Now that it’s fixed, we can concentrate on SEO properly. Anyway thanks for the comments.
For me WLW is uploading via ftp but creating a new folder by postname and uploading it to that folder, any idea how to fix this in WLW and Iam also waiting for your guide.
Will try RightUpload :)
@Avinash: Yes, Windows Live writer creates a separate folder and also creates thumbnail of images. This is because when you attach an image in a post and resize it using the mouse cursor. To solve this, follow these simple steps:
1. Never resize images inside WLW. If you want to resize the image, do it in an image editing program like SNAGIT or GIMP.
2. Log in to WordPress administration area and go to Settings > Media. Set the thumbnail sizes to 0. Refer to these settings http://img.ampercent.com/post/wlw-media-settings.png
Hope that helps. Thanks for your comment
Thanks Amit for a quick reply, will use right upload.
Will WLW create a folder again if if try resizing images inserted via From Web -> Image URL in WLW ??
Any way you suggest in fixing this issue on older posts.
Once the image is rendered into WLW, do not resize it. If you resize the image even after adding it from a web url, WLW will create a folder anyway. And In Older posts, you can not fix it, because the folders are already created. You will have to move the images to a new location, update the source of images for those posts manually, can be tiring if you have a large number of posts to consider.
Nice article. I didnt’ know that images text would be like this untill i read this post. But how do you do it for Blogger, since we can’t have access to any folder.. Please help.
@palla: You can’t define a custom image folder for Blogger, because Blogger gives you no control over the files and images. Thanks for your comment
Hi
When I click insert picture button , I can not add from web.it wants me to choose a file in my computer.What is the problem.Could you help me?
@Tesla: When you click the Inser picture button, a window will open with two tabs in it. The first tab is from image upload from your computer while the 2nd tab is from a web URL. Hope that helps.
yes at first it opened but now I use windows 7 and I load wl writer.But now when I insert pictures, it wants me to open a file on my computer.it doesn’t let me insert the picture link.
@Tesla: That’s Strange, can you show me a screenshot of the Image upload Window ?
http://i48.tinypic.com/2r7ajck.jpg
@Tesla: I hope this image will solve the problem. Let me know whether you are able to grasp the idea or not.
http://img.ampercent.com/post/wlw-problem.gif
@webmaster
Thanks for help.But I couldn’t solve.Actually the pic that you showed is right and I can see the same pic on my computer.But now I use win 7 and I loaded wl writer.And when I want to inssert a picture it doesn’t let me add a link.So I have to add as html :).There is a problm but I could not understand