that's weird.

I had an issue with widgets in which I had to delete and re-install my skins through b2evo Tools/Advanced menu.

have you tried that?

Deleting skin and reinstalling it works. But once only.
2 minutes ago i discovered that this problem i was thinking was gone away, is instead come back.
But now deleting and reinstalling the skin doesn't solve. :(
It's really weird. Blog #2 skin is correctly retrieved, blog #1 and #3 not. And they use the same skin, same css and same main.php.....

What is WLW and is this the same or a different problem as you're working with at http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=14268 ?

Please clarify the problem here for me okay?

No no, they are 2 different problems. There's no relationship between WLW annoyance and the skins not listed in b2evolution.

Again: what is WLW and what is the problem you're having with it?

WLW is Windows Live Writer which i use to publish my messages on my blog.
It's able to make a preview of your post retrieving blog themes.
My problem is that Live Writer is able to retrieve blog #2 skin, but fails with blog #1 and #3. Since these 3 blogs are identical, i don't understand the reason.
That's all.

Oh okay now I get it.

Does http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?p=68195#68195 help? Francois says to use the MetaWeblog API (whatever that means...).

I've never tried to use that thing but something that MIGHT help shed some light on the subject: first off, most blog apps don't do multi-blogs straight out of the box, so most interfaces aren't going to be set up to handle it well. Another thing that MIGHT help a bit is to recognize that when we post in a b2evolution blog we are actually posting in a category that happens to be attached to a blog. To us as people it's all the same, but internally it really does make a difference.

Therefore even if your blogs have identical skins selected they must, by design, have different categories attached to them. Does this Live Writer thing ask you for category info? If so then there might be the root of all evil? Dunno really because I've no experience with it. All I know is that sometimes knowing "we post in a cat that happens to be attached to a blog" has been very helpful with some issues in the past.

I think I'll download that thing and see what it's all about ... but it's an MS product ... but it seems popular to some here in the forums ... but it's an MS product ... but it might be a good one ... but what are the odds of *that* ever happening ... Thinking about MS hurts my brain :(

That was kinda neat. Not sure what value it offers, but it's a wysiwyg editor and some folk like that. Gonna hafta make sure my test installation doesn't ping and see how badly I can break a post using it ;)

So here's what I got: it was okay finding the skin for the first blog I set it up to know about, but it couldn't handle finding the skin for the second one. In my case that means it knows what blog #1 looks like but not blog #2. I even allowed it to make a temporary post to figure it out, but it failed to do so.

skynet was blog #2 account the first blog you told it about? If so at least we get the same symptoms. Dunno if it's b2evo or live writer breaking on that detail. I should build another installation and see if it can find a skin for another blog with a different domain name...

Yes, we have the same symptoms.
Some days ago, after recognized this error, i changed the skin for all my blogs (they use the same one), i deleted it and reinstalled then. In that case Live Writer problems went away. Every blog skin were recovered by the editor.
But this time it's different. I deleted and reinstalled my skin many times and reloaded containers, but nothing changed. And since Live Writer was working well until yesterday, now i don't know what's happened on my blog.

Anyway, since you have my problem too, i think there's something wrong in b2evolution metaweblog API: sometimes they works right, sometimes not.

here is the section of live writer log file when fails when downloading skin:

WindowsLiveWriter,3708,None,00006,04-feb-2008 10.45.03.468,"Failed to download template Framed: System.Exception: Unable to locate blog post elements using most recent post
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args)
at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Detection.BlogEditingTemplateDetector.ParseWebpageIntoEditingTemplate_OnUIThread(Control uiContext, BlogPostRegionLocatorStrategy regionLocator, IProgressHost progress)
at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Detection.BlogEditingTemplateDetector.GetBlogTemplateFiles(IProgressHost progress, BlogPostRegionLocatorStrategy regionLocatorStrategy, BlogEditingTemplateStrategy[] templateStrategies, BlogEditingTemplateType[] templateTypes)",""
WindowsLiveWriter,3708,None,00007,04-feb-2008 10.45.05.828,"Failed to download template Webpage: System.Exception: Unable to locate blog post elements using most recent post
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args)
at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Detection.BlogEditingTemplateDetector.ParseWebpageIntoEditingTemplate_OnUIThread(Control uiContext, BlogPostRegionLocatorStrategy regionLocator, IProgressHost progress)
at WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Detection.BlogEditingTemplateDetector.GetBlogTemplateFiles(IProgressHost progress, BlogPostRegionLocatorStrategy regionLocatorStrategy, BlogEditingTemplateStrategy[] templateStrategies, BlogEditingTemplateType[] templateTypes)",""

skynet wrote:

... Anyway, since you have my problem too, i think there's something wrong in b2evolution metaweblog API: sometimes they works right, sometimes not. ...

I don't see that as the only possible conclusion, but I'm not an expert on either topic so I'll wait till those who know the details get into it a bit.

Hi EdB,
solved! I've finally found a solution.

Here is what to do:
1. for the blogs live writer is unable to retrieve skin, let it to publish a test post. It will say you that fails to recover style, but it doesn't matter.
2. go to your blog and publish the test post which has been saved as draft.
3. come back now to live writer and let him to detect style again. It will succesfully download theme and you will be able to see the preview in live writer.

If this doesn't work, edit the test post and save it then without adding anything. Just save it. Come back to step 3.
Let me know if it works following this way.
Bye

Sure did!

Found a few "issues" with using it though. Like it couldn't properly handle what it called a "split post", or perhaps I have no idea what that means to it. But anyway everything after the split didn't show up when I saved the draft to my installation. It doesn't know about plugins, but it knows about multiple categories and skins so that's cool.

Anyway you've found a way for it to be able to preview multiple blogs so guess what. You're now the WLW expert - congratulations!

You're right.
Didn't see that bug.

It's weird because if you switch to the html code you can see that it add the <!--more--> tag, which is instead missing when the post is published.
"More" tag means that everything is after it will be hidden, and a "more" link is added to show what you decided to hide.

If you go to b2evolution to write a post, you will see the !M button, which add the "more" tag.

Oh yeah I'm hip. I ... uh ... kinda know my way around b2evo yah?

It's a very cool app. It knows about multiple blogs (with a little trickery), and it seems to know about multiple categories. It can preview with your skin, and it'll save stuff online as a draft. I'm guessing it'll save it locally as a draft as well but I didn't play that much with it. Just enough to try to help with this problem you were having.

It's cool that it's a WYSIWYG editor that knows all the above stuff, but for me I'll be deleting it from my machine soon. I'm old-school on this stuff so I'll just use the back office and be happy. One day they'll come up with a WYSIWYG editor in the back and I'll be screwed :roll:

Hi,

has anybody got to the bottom of the issue with WLW and the <!--more--> tag?
It seems that not only the tag is missing, but nothing after it is uploaded.

I tried this again today with latest WLW and both B2Evo 2.4.2 & 3.3.0-rc1 and the result is the same.