Low No Cost Tech

Problems using Auto-Discovery RSD of MoveableType Engine

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on September 28, 2006 8:04:11 PM

Updated 2006.09.29
Registry hack removed as unnecessary. Monologue also removed.
Note: This is relevant for those wishing to use MoveableType and Windows Live Writer, if you only want to use Metaweblog or Blogger, then you do not need to read these instructions.

Alright, after two days of being stupid and help from the Windows Live Writer (WLW) Forum I've finally got WLW auto-discovering Xaraya/nomoa.com but it requires a few little fiddles to work correctly. Hopefully we can make it fully automated so I can get some users on other sites running Xaraya.

In the meantime, the steps below can help you configure your current Xaraya 1.1.2 site to work with Windows Live Writer.

The key things to getting Windows Live Writer to work with Xaraya/Nomoa.com using Moveable Type is:

Use a fake site when creating an account, or
Update your server/host and Edit your registry file

1. Use a fake site when creating an account.

Auto-discovery isn't working properly for Xaraya, as far as I can deign for the moment, so don't use it and it will save you a lot of hassle.

Unfortunately, if you put in the proper address for your Xaraya blog, it wont let you edit to a custom installation.

1.1 Wizard Dialog: Weblog Homepage and Login

For Weblog Homepage URL:

specify the non-existent http://www.example.org

For Username/Password:

Enter your correct username/password to use with your proper blog.

We are using http://www.example.org because that is a restricted domain name (i.e. no-one is supposed to be using it) so it should quickly error-out (fail to connect to the website) and let you continue with manually configuring your settings.

Click the "Next" button.

1.2 - Wizard Dialog: Add New Weblog

We now have a dialog box that let's us select the type of server we are using.

For Type of weblog that you are using (Select Weblog Provider)

Select the "Moveable Type" option, although I don't know what the difference is between that, and the [Custom (Moveable Type API)]

For Remote posting URL for your weblog,

Enter your host information with the following format:

http://<<hostname>>/<path>/ws.php?type=xmlrpc

For example: to use Nomoa.com, you would enter

http://www.nomoa.com/ws.php?type=xmlrpc

(we don't need to use the <path> option for nomoa.com)

Click the "Next" button

1.3 Wizard Dialog: Detecting Weblog Settings

This screen will show you a progress bar and changing text with a little information of what WLW is doing.

When it is finished. please post articles to your site.

2. Update your server/host and Edit your registry file

If you must persevere with the auto-discovery (i.e. you are just ubergeek or in real trouble) then you'll need some geek to do some work for you.

2.1 Update the Xaraya distribution to the current source release.

Xaraya 1.1.2 and prior do not advertise through RSD when you have Moveable Type enabled for your blog clients. Therefore, you have to get an update of two files:

./modules/xmlrpcserver/xaruser/main.php and
./modules/xmlrpcserver/xaruser/rsd.php

Once those updates are completed, your client can autodetect that you have Moveable Type support.

More Information.

While trying to get RSD auto-discovery working, I made the error of specifying the API as "Moveable Type", whereas it is technically "Movable Type" as per Six Apart documentation:

http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/breese/atom/protocol/atom_autodiscovery.html

With only two clients supporting auto-discovery, I was misled by the fact that ECTO for Windows supports both use of 'with e' and 'without e'.

WLW on the other hand did not recognise 'with e' and ignored it while finding the other api's and using them.

I learned a fair bit through this tracing process, so although it took a while I'm glad to have gone through the exercise and hopefully helped someone who will not go through this problem in future.