How to blog to WordPress using Office 2007 – including automatic image uploading…

So here’s some of the old ways:
Do it in WordPress (slow and image mgmt is painful)
Do it using Deepest Sender (fast, but clunky if using images)
Direct from Flickr (Limited control of how it displays)

Now the biggest pain with blogging is image management. The way most people do it is you ftp your image up having resized etc which is a royal pain in the a___ especially when you have to start remembering filenames or copying and pasting URLs. Blogging should be as simple as sending an email – copy and paste your pictures in and hit send. The good news is a few minutes of setting your blog up in Word 2007 can save a lot of time and energy.

Here’s how to it real fast, +lots of images simply using copy and pasting. FTP of images is all handled automatically:

Open Word 2007 (This is a new feature of Office 2007)

1. Write Something in a Blank Document

2. Now go grab an image. I tend to use TECH SMITH’S SNAG IT or MICROSOFT ONE NOTE for screen capture. A good free tool is ScreenHunter. You simply capture the screen, resize, crop etc without the need for Photoshop. Next copy and paste into Word.

Note : Copying and pasting results in a PNG file being uploaded. There does not seem to be any setting to control this. To create a jpg image, simply drag a jpg file from your computer into the document and Word will upload that image.

OK – Normally you are pretty much done and your BLOG IS READY TO POST. All you do is hit Publish.

3. Proceed to the Office Menu ‘Ball’ (Top Left) > Publish > Blog

The first time you do this you will need to set up your blog. You only need to do this one though. You will notice that the interface is different now. You’ll need to add the title of your blog page at the top of your doc, and if all is set up you just hit Publish and Voila!

SETTING UP YOUR BLOG:
1. Click Manage Accounts:

2. Create your account. Select your provider after pressing NEW.

3. You enter your blog details and password etc on the next screen.

4. To set up images click “Picture Options” above. If you are using FTP for your images select “MY OWN SERVER”

You don’t enter a login and password yet – it will do this the first time you go to upload. Note: make sure you have your directories set up right if you are posting to subfolders. MS Office will now automatically name your files and upload to your ftp server with no additional work needed.

That’s it – blogging just got a lot easier and faster!!! Enjoy.