Windows Live Writer Invalid Response Document Returned from XmlRpc server

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After upgrading to WordPress 3.1.1 I had a ton of issues having Live Writer connect to DragonBlogger.com but I think they ended up being unrelated to the upgrade and instead due to the number of articles I had published on DragonBlogger.com.

I could write articles and publish them, but if I tired to open articles on my site I would get the following error:

image

The response to the metaWeblog.getRecentPosts method received from the blog server was invalid:

Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server

I could tell from this log that the actual method "metaWeblog.getRecentPosts" was what was specifically failing because it worked when I tried to open pages instead of posts. 

To fix the issue, I had to dig into Live Writer’s log files to learn more, you can find Live Writer logs by doing the following.

Open up an explorer Window and navigate to: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Windows Live Writer\

(The above is for Windows 7 and Vista, if you are looking in Windows XP you need to go to %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Windows Live Writer\ instead.

In searching through the log I found this information:

<b>Fatal error</b>:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 72 bytes) in <b>/home3/dragonb2/public_html/wp-includes/meta.php</b> on line <b>339</b><br />
",""
WindowsLiveWriter,1.4392,None,00057,07-Apr-2011 12:50:47.347,"DisplayableException occurred: WindowsLive.Writer.Extensibility.BlogClient.BlogClientInvalidServerResponseException: Invalid Server Response – The response to the metaWeblog.getRecentPosts method received from the blog server was invalid:

Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server

I could tell I was reaching some sort of memory cap here, and after doing some search about it I found out my limit of 64M in the php.ini file in my WordPress home directory was too low for Writer to read in what it needed.  I had to bump up my memory to 128M by changing my line in my php.ini to:

memory_limit = 128M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (16MB)

And once I did this, the problem immediately went away when I tried to have Live Writer reload my blog post themes. 

So in finding out how to solve this problem for Live Writer, I also solved several other Live Writer WordPress problems and will post them here as well.

Fix Live Writer File Upload Limits

To allow Live Writer to upload larger image files to WordPress, edit your php.ini file on your blog server and change this file.

upload_max_filesize = 2M

to say

upload_max_filesize = 10M

This will allow you to upload images of up to 10mb in size, if you need larger then set it larger but make sure it is below the memory limit.  I don’t recommend uploading huge images as they would take to long to display in the browser, however if you want to upload files or software so readers can download them from your site you may have to increase this limit much higher.

Summary

Windows Live Writer still has a ways to go to be completely compatible with WordPress but it does work better than most applications.  Unfortunately there isn’t very much development for extensions and barely one new extension shows up every few months in the gallery.  In addition the theme detection has the annoying habit of publishing a "temporary post" just to set the theme which only does so correctly sometimes anyway.

I will have a follow up article on how to fix WordPress theme issues with Live Writer.  I still write most of my articles in Live Writer and only do last minute editing, adding featured images and SEO tweaks directly in the WordPress editor.  The ability to copy paste images in Live Writer plus be able to write content offline and publish later is still extremely convenient.

-Dragon Blogger

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