Since I start using the new Windows Live Writer as my offline blog editor, I have not had any issues. I have post few reviews about this awesome Free software that made my blogging life easier. Windows Live Writer Review - Round Two.

Now I just got one issues that has something to do with the Chinese characters. I post a new entry to my WordPress blog and find that all Chinese characters became a question mark.

It means that the publish process has converted the Chinese characters incorrectly. Since UTF-8 is used as the standard encoding, the problem is either on WordPress or on Live Writer. After I post the question on Joe Cheng’s Live writer blog, I got the answer back from him shortly. You can find Joe’s blog post here. FINALLY! Writer Beta 2!

So the problem is this. Non-ASCII characters render incorrectly on UTF-8 encoded blogs. So here is the answer to correct this issues.

Open your Start menu -> Run -> type “regedit” to open the system registry editor. Be careful, do NOT mess around with the editor.

Find the registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\. It should look like this.

20070628_livewriter_1

You should see your blog list under the Weblogs. If you have more than one blog you published with Live Writer, you can select one of them and find the one for WordPress, which you have problem with. Look for the HomePageUrl and find your blog.

Once you find the blog you have problem with. Click on the ManifestOptions. On the right panel, you should see characterSet. Make sure the data is UTF-8.

20070628_livewriter_2

In the left panel, click on the UserOptionOverrides. In the right panel, look for characterSet. If it doesn’t exist. Right click on the white space and click New -> String Value. Name the value characterSet and leave the value empty.

20070628_livewriter_4

After all, it should look like this.

20070628_livewriter_3

Close the registry editor and re-open your Windows Live Writer. Publish a new Chinese blog entry. You should be able to post non-ASCII characters blog from now on. This will also work on any non-English language as well. As long as your WordPress blog is default to UTF-8 encoding.

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