How do I set up QTM to access my blog?

When you have installed QTM, it does not know where your blog is, or rather how to access it. It cannot communicate with your blog just by reading the page or by the web interface you use to maintain it. It communicates in a form called XML-RPC. XML means Extensible Mark-up Language and is a way of representing data that looks a lot like the HTML used to write web pages. RPC stands for Remote Procedure Calls and is a fancy way of saying "one computer telling another what to do". QTM tells your blogging program what to do by sending it an instruction written in XML.

Blogging software usually has a file containing a program which reads in XML. If your blog is based on Movable Type, it's called mt-xmlrpc.cgi; if it uses Wordpress or Drupal, it's called xmlrpc.php.

From the main "Catkin QTM" window, open up the file menu and choose the Preferences option. (If you're on a Mac, Preferences is in the Apple menu.) You fill this in by breaking down the full location of the script. For example, if it's located at http://www.domain.co.uk/wordpress/xmlrpc.php, you need to put www.domain.co.uk in the Server space and /wordpress/xmlrpc.php in the Location space.

However, if you're on a hosted service, the server and location is likely to be one of these three:

• TypePad: www.typepad.com/t/api (i.e. server is www.typepad.com, location is /t/api)
• Wordpress.com: yourblog.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php (for yourblog, substitute your actual sub-domain name)
• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com/do/process/external/PostInterceptor

Please note that QTM cannot access Blogger blogs, as Blogger has abandoned this interface.

Login and password are those you use to access your blog maintenance site. Port and Blog type are not used at present. If you are using Qt 4.2, you need to select the Account page to see these details.

When you have entered these, you may like to change some other settings - such as whether to allow comments and/or trackback by default. (Trackback means other bloggers posting links on your site to theirs - such as when they post an article on their site commenting on something you have written. Of course, you don't have to allow this although many do.)

When you have finished, click OK. It will then contact your blog, if you have got the details right, and obtained the details for your blogs and the category list for the first blog it finds. If you want to post to another blog, select it and it will fetch the category list for that.