Windows Live Writer and Wordpress issues
June 3rd, 2007
*Note – non marketing related post – but I thought I would share this solution with the world to save people a few hours when they come across this problem. – PW
The Problem
Today I upgraded to the new version of the Windows Live Writer beta. When trying to add a weblog account, I received the following error:
“An error occurred while attempting to connect to your weblog:
Invalid Server Response = The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid:
Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server
You must correct this error before proceeding”
So… after a quick search there were a few different solutions I came across. But none were working
After more investigation scouring my hosts (Dreamhost) support wiki, I found the answer!!!
The Solution
There is a bug in version 5.2.2 of PHP (which is the version that my host uses) that essentially totally screws up your XmlRpc responses. The good news is that it is easy to fix, all you need to do is add one line to the top of your xmlrpc.php file
$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = file_get_contents(“php://input”);
As soon as I did that… it worked
Hope that little tidbit of information saves you. Because the Dreamhost support forum is a wiki, I updated the reference there as well to include WLW Beta 2 on the problem list. Got to love wiki based support!



June 5th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Wow… this saved my day! Wordpress on Dreamhost for me as well… thanks so much for doing the legwork and posting the solution!!!
Cheers,
Clint
June 6th, 2007 at 4:24 am
[...] BTW : Voor wie LiveWriter wil gebruiken bij Dreamhost (of eender welke andere provider met PHP 5.5.2 moet even een file editeren om een bug in PHP 5.5.2 te bypassen. Meer info hier of op de Dreamhost Support Wiki. « Photosynth Fotoloze Joker » [...]
June 7th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I just started having this same problem using Dreamhost and my desktop blogging publisher….I just tried pasting the above line into my xmlrpc file, but still not working with Quama or Live Writer…can you tell me exactly where to put the above link? I’ve tried top line, second line and third line I think, to no avail (I’m using Crimson Editor to edit file) btw. Thanks
June 10th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Thanks a ton for posting this. I love Windows Live Writer, and I’ve been frustrated with this same exact error. I use GoDaddy, so I wonder if this solution fixes it over there, also. If so, I’ll post the fix at my place and give you the credit back to yours.
November 4th, 2007 at 6:46 am
[...] did not recognise this blog, after upgrading it seems to be working so far, but I have read of problems with the publishing of the blog. So if this publishes without any hitch then Live Writer will defiantly be my choice [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I’ve tried but it doesn’t work.
There was line
$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = file_get_contents(”php://input”);
in xmlrpc.php file
Please help me to find the solution!!
July 10th, 2008 at 7:05 am
I just installed Wordpress 2.5.1 and the latest release of Windows Live Writer and found that there is an error in xmlrpc.php.
There is an error in some versions of xmlrpc.php.
In function mw_newPost()
this line about halfway in the function is incorrect, and will show up in the log of the latest version of Windows Live Writer.
logIO(’O’, ‘Post cats: ‘ . printr($catnames,true));
printr is not a PHP function nor is it defined in the WordPress code.
Instead of “printr”, the correct function name is “print_r”
logIO(’O’, ‘Post cats: ‘ . print_r($catnames,true));
August 4th, 2008 at 3:00 am
I get the same error and I tried adding that line but still no go. Where does the line go anyway? very top or after the <php command?
I’m on a free host called 000webhost.com so I guess I get what I pay for huh? ;0
Please help. I love live writer and hate not being able to post to my wordpress 2.6 blog anymore.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:21 am
[...] I’m sure you’ll find this to be a very bad excuse, however it’s true. I have not been blogging because Windows Live Writer has not been working. I finally got a chance to dig into the problem and this is what I found out. PHP 5.22 has an error when generating the xmlrpc.php file in wordpress. My hosting company, HostMonster, happens to use PHP 5.22 and therefore when Windows Live Writer looked at the xmlrpc.php to determine the details about my blog it gave me an error. Here is a link to the site that gave me the errors. [...]
October 4th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Bromas aparte!