MSN Spaces, the free
Microsoft's blogging platform, is natively closed to external applications and
you can't directly post on it via standard blogging tools such as
BlogJet, PostXing, W-Bloggar or IMHO (I've
only listed the ones I've tested).
I've see in the past discussions on forum about this and the solution
proposed was always to try to have a service that translate the MetaWeblogApi (used by standard blogging tools) into
something readable from MSN Spaces, such as email posting.
Robin Curry has done the
service for you... he has created a web
service that simply intercepts a MetaWeblog.newPost method call, creates an SMTP mail
containing the post, and sends it to the MSN Spaces email address configured for
Email Publishing for the space. That's it, noe you've the way to post into your
MSN Space via a standard MetaWeblogApi compliant
blogging tool.
You can download the service HERE.
To use it, you need a server to host the
service with a configured SMTP server. Then:
- Copy the service to the desired server and configure a virtual directory
to point to it.
- Change the config values in the web.config to point to the appropriate
SmtpServer and to use your Send From Email Address as configured in your MSN
space.
- When calling the newPost method, parameters should represent the
following:
- blogid = [not used]
- username = [MSN space name]
-
password = [MSN space email publishing secret word]
- post = [struct
containing your post title and description]
- publish = [not used]
After the service installation, you've to configure yout
blogging tool to work with the service. Robin explains us how to do it with
BlogJet:
1) Configure BlogJet to support Post To Spaces
API: Open the BlogJet API type
definition file at c:\Program
Files\BlogJet\apitypes.xml and add the following:
<API>
<Id>27</Id>
<Title>Post To
Spaces</Title>
<APIName>MetaWeblog</APIName>
<DefaultHost>WWW.YOURHOST.COM</DefaultHost>
<DefaultPort>80</DefaultPort>
<DefaultEndPoint>/PostToSpaces/Service/blogger.aspx</DefaultEndPoint>
<ShowSubject>True</ShowSubject>
<MultipleBlogs>False</MultipleBlogs>
<PublishEnabled>True</PublishEnabled>
<FileSupport>False</FileSupport>
<HasCategories>False</HasCategories>
<EnableDates>False</EnableDates>
<EnableExcerpt>False</EnableExcerpt>
<EnableKeywords>False</EnableKeywords>
<EnableComments>False</EnableComments>
<EnableTrackbacks>False</EnableTrackbacks>
<EnablePings>False</EnablePings>
<UseSSL>False</UseSSL>
</API>
(Note, the Id = 27 was arbitrary, the main
thing is that it needs to not conflict with the ids used for the other types in
the file).
3. Creating the BlogJet account: After
saving the file, open BlogJet and choose to create a new account, selecting Post
To Spaces as the provider type.
3) Username & password: The
username should be your space name and password should be your secret word as
configured in your space email publishing settings.
That's it, now you're ready to go! 