CodePlex project owner/contributor/doc writer? Don’t like the wiki web UI/markup/etc? What if I were to tell you you can use Windows Live Writer to edit your CodePlex wiki…?

Gunnar Peipman's ASP.NET blog - CodePlex supports Windows Live Writer!

“I am documenting local community portal that is hosted in CodePlex. Wikis have always been annoying for me when it comes to creating a good content. So, I was preparing for boring evening full of wiki mark-up and messing with good format, manual image uploads etc. But CodePlex surprised me today – it’s wiki supports Windows Live Writer!

As tonight is not the last night when I am documenting my work I was specially glad I got this heavy boost to my documenting action. I will save a lot of time I think as I am pretty quick when I’m using Windows Live Writer. Take a look at the following screenshot.

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Conclusion

After couple of documentation pages I was amazed how fast I can move on with documenting when I don’t have to use this weird wiki mark-up and manual image uploads. Windows Live Writer is my killer tool when it goes to writing something for web. Now I can do also my CodePlex writing with Windows Live Writer and I can focus more on the quality of my documents. And this IS cool!

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CodePlex Information and Discussion -  Using Windows Live Writer

“Getting started using Windows Live Writer with your CodePlex project is fairly simple.  …

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Windows Live Writer Q&A

Q: Can I add images to my wiki pages through Windows Live Writer?
A: Yes, images will be uploaded to CodePlex and attached to the wiki page.

Q: Can I add code samples to my wiki pages through Windows Live Writer?
A: Yes, you can use one of the many plugins to insert code. We recommend using Insert Code for Windows Live Writer, Source Code Formatter, or PreCode.

Q: Do I have to use Windows Live Writer?
A: No. Since we implement the MetaWeblog API, you can use any tool that uses this same API.

Q: Can I embed videos or Silverlight applications using Windows Live Writer?
A: No. Similarly to the web based editor, we will ignore this content. We are looking into supporting this in the future, however.

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Editing of existing pages? Yep

Image support? Yep

Awesome? Yep!

Anyone writing CodePlex wiki pages/doc’s and also use WLW will understand just how cool this is (been there, done that, got the t-shirt… ;) And it’s been available since at least August 2010.

Note #1: The screenshots and instructions are for the previous version of Windows Live Writer, but the capability works fine in WLW 2011. Adding a CodePlex Project to WLW is just as easy and simple as adding any other “other” blog.

Note #2: Use your main project CodePlex UserID and Password and NOT your CodePlex Version Control UserID/Password (ie NOT your “SND\*_cp” UserID/Password)