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Hi Jamie,

As you probably know, when you use Windows Live Writer (or any other offline blog posting client), it needs to pass a username and password to Community Server to authenticate you. However those programs don't support using Windows Authentication.

There is a work around, but you'll need to have direct access to your database and the ability to change the permission on a file in your web site.  Every user in CS has a password saved in the database, but when using the Windows Integrated Authentication it's just a randomly generated password since CS relys on the Windows server to tell it whether or not the user is logged in.

1. First, open IIS on the web server, find the /blogs/metablog.ashx file, right-click on it and select Properties.  Then click the File Security tab, click the Edit authentication button, and check the enable anonymous access checkbox.  This tells your web server to allow anonymous access to just the MetaBlog API service.
2. Now connect to your database, and find your username in the aspnet_Users table.  Note the UserId value for it.
3. Find the row in the aspnet_Membership table for your UserId.  Update the Password column value to be something that you will remember.
4. You should now be able to connect with WinLive Writer using your username and the password that you chose.

Hope that helps!

Kevin,

Thanks so much for this post.  I really like what Live Writer offers and Microsoft left out integrated login support in this version.  Supposedly they are looking at it for future versions.

I tried to implement this with CS2007.1 and Windows Live Writer Version 2008.  When I tried changing the password for my integrated account in the Membership table Live Writer gave me an error connecting.  "An error occured while attempting to connect to your weblog: Blog Server Error - Server Error 0 Occured" User does not exist, you must correct this error before proceeding."  To correct this you must add an interum step below:

 3a. Update the PasswordFormat column to be 0. 

As an optional workaround, you can:

1. First, open IIS on the web server, find the /blogs/metablog.ashx file, right-click on it and select Properties.  Then click the File Security tab, click the Edit authentication button, and check the enable anonymous access checkbox.  This tells your web server to allow anonymous access to just the MetaBlog API service.
2. In your CS administration panel, click the membership tab and Create New Account.  Create an account that you want to connect using Live Writer and assign it appropriate permissions within CS.  No database changes required.

Thanks again for putting me on the right track Kevin. 

Kevin Harder

Hi Jamie,

As you probably know, when you use Windows Live Writer (or any other offline blog posting client), it needs to pass a username and password to Community Server to authenticate you. However those programs don't support using Windows Authentication.

There is a work around, but you'll need to have direct access to your database and the ability to change the permission on a file in your web site.  Every user in CS has a password saved in the database, but when using the Windows Integrated Authentication it's just a randomly generated password since CS relys on the Windows server to tell it whether or not the user is logged in.

1. First, open IIS on the web server, find the /blogs/metablog.ashx file, right-click on it and select Properties.  Then click the File Security tab, click the Edit authentication button, and check the enable anonymous access checkbox.  This tells your web server to allow anonymous access to just the MetaBlog API service.
2. Now connect to your database, and find your username in the aspnet_Users table.  Note the UserId value for it.
3. Find the row in the aspnet_Membership table for your UserId.  Update the Password column value to be something that you will remember.
4. You should now be able to connect with WinLive Writer using your username and the password that you chose.

Hope that helps!