One piece of software that Microsoft got right was Windows Live Writer. If you’re a blogger, and don’t want to dig around in HTML (and arguably even if you do), Windows Live Writer is the software that we recommend for your drafting needs. One flaw with Live Writer, though, is that it doesn’t offer a setting to change where your blog posts get saved on your machine. By default, your drafts and recent posts get saved to your user folder, in the \Documents\My Weblog Posts\ directory. What if you want to save your posts elsewhere? You can do this, with a registry hack. According to the Live Writer dev team, here’s how you do it:

• Open up regedit (in Win7, just type “regedit” into the start menu)
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer
• Right click on the “Writer” folder in the left pane and choose New > String Value
• Name the value PostsDirectory and then double-click on it to edit
  • You can try pointing it to your documents folder, which is normally “C:\Users\<your-username>\Documents\” in Win7
  • Or point it somewhere else. Note that Writer will create two child folders wherever you point it: Drafts and Recent Posts.
• If it doesn’t work the first time, try pointing it somewhere that doesn’t need admin privileges, for example “C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Local\Temp”.

If you want to automate the whole process, a blogger, Larry Henry, Jr., has made a tool to do so. It requires you to run a small app, and to fill in the new location. The app then makes the registry change for you. I haven’t tried the automated process myself, so let us know in the comments if it works for you.

How to change the Drafts and Recent Posts folder in Windows Live Writer 2011 [LEHSYS Side Notes]