One thing that has been difficult for me when I create how to blog posts is to insert code snippets. The visual editor will change it and the HTML editor will actually run the code. So it is difficult to put code examples in WordPress posts. Once again Live Writer to the rescue. There are now at least a couple of plugins that make this easier. There is an insert code plugin and a code snippet plugin, available for free download.

Another popular group of plugins are ones for inserting photos. There is a plugin that will turn any image into a Polaroid picture, and several plugins for inserting galleries of photos. Including  your Facebook photos, Flickr photos, and your Picasa images. There is also a cool plugin that will insert a thumbnail file of any website. There is even a snagIt screen capture plugin.

I also like the feed reader plugin which allows you to insert feeds into your site and the Wikipedia link plugin which allows highlighted text to be turned into a Wikipedia link. Maybe I should make my own plugin that allows highlighted text to be turned into one of my links. I’m sure I am not the first person to consider that.

If you are a tablet PC user there is also an ink blog plugin which allows you to blog directly from your tablet PC. No typing required. I could go on about all of the cool plugins but you are probably better off browsing the list and finding what uniquely applies to you. In fact if there is something you want to do and can’t figure out how. Don’t worry there is probably a plugin for that.

I’m just going to mention a couple other plugins that I think are really cool. The Google Insert Maps plugin will insert a map into your post, the Amazon Book Lookup Plugin will let your readers search for books by author or title and the book information is included in your post along with your affiliate ID. I love the formatting options already available in WLW but if you want added functionality there are plugins to draw horizontal lines and increase your bullet point graphics.

Since it has been awhile since I updated this site I just wanted to give your brief update. It is November and winter is finally here. The holiday season is just around the corner if you have some last minute preparation before the real cold sets in it’s time to get it done. So you can spend the winter writing on your blogs and not worrying about what is going on outside.

That means clean your gutters, put away the patio furniture and get out your winter swimming pool covers. Have a great Holiday Season and enjoy your winter writing activities.

What does Zemanta do? It helps you find and load images, related articles, and references to Wikipedia to your blog post. Zemanta has a semantic algorithm which analyzes your content and compares it to a database that suggests content.

You can download Zemanta for LiveWriter here.

Anyway live writer has some more new plug ins, worth checking out. So in no particular order here you go:

• AdSense Coder another plug in for inserting that pesky AdSense in a post.
• Quote Of The Day Inserts a quote of the day into your post. I’ll test it now, and see if it works:

Quote of the Day:
If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness and, therefore, your excellence.
–Anonymous

Actually that quote of the day thing is pretty cool. You just click on it and you get the insertion. They also have a bible one for the more religious folks. Very cool. Just watch out for duplicate content penalties.

• Word Count Yay! Windows Live Writer now has a Word Count plug in. Need I say more?