Word 2007 Blog posting: Adding Images

Of course, if you want to include images in your posting that’s another challenge. You can insert an image into your Word document the usual way (Click the Insert tab: click Picture: find the image: click Insert). Unfortunately, there is one difficulty. In order for the blog to display the image, the image has to be located on a web server somewhere. You can use an external service like Flickr, or you can upload the image the usual blog way, then go to Word and make a post (too redundant and non-sensible), or you can use a combination of your zoo space with a little help from webdav. Here’s how:

1. First, make a folder in your zoo space to store the pictures. Use Secure Shell File Transfer (sFTP) to connect to Zoo. Then navigate to your public_html folder and make a new folder inside it named blog-images (or any name of your choosing, remembering that all lower case and no spaces in the name works best). Close sFTP.
2. Open Word and begin a New Blog Post. In the Blog Post window, go back to Manage Accounts. Click on your account and click on “Change”
3. In the dialog box, click on “Picture Options” then type in these settings:
   Upload URL: https://webdav.uvm.edu/~UVMNetID/blog-images (note the s in https, and the webdav, and replace ‘UVMNetID’ with your actual your UVM netid)

   Source URL: http://www.uvm.edu/~UVMNetID/blog-images (no s in http, www, and replace ‘UVMNetID’ with your actual your UVM netid)

4. Click OK, OK, OK, Close, etc. Now insert a picture in your document the usual Word way and Publish it. It should upload the picture to your blog-images folder. It will give the picture an unusual and ugly name. If you edit and re-Publish the post it will add the picture to your blog-images folder again with a different name (stupid!) but it will work! Here’s the proof:

    

    

Here’s another method:

1. Create a folder in your zoo space named blog-images(as described above) and use sFTP to move your images into that folder before creating a post
2. Use the Windows drive mapping feature to map a drive to that blog-images folder
3. Open Word, choose New: Blog posting, and when you want to insert an image look for it through that drive.
4. Watch out! This method sounds reasonable—the images will retain the original name you gave them—however you will still have to move your images into that folder in a way that sets the permissions to be publically accessible via the web. Saving them to a mapped drive does not do this gracefully.

    

   To be continued…