Ever found yourself wishing there was a template to quickly do something in Windows Live Writer but didn't quite have the technical skills to go off and roll your own plug-in to do exactly what you need?

Well, thanks to a very neat dynamic template engine for WLW it's now possible.

You can create templates to easily insert common snippets of HTML or text or, if you're feeling more adventurous, you can write templates that are powerful enough to be considered "mini-plugins" in their own right, but which are still radically simpler to write and distribute than traditional Windows Live Writer plugins.

If you have ever written a PHP, JSP, or ASP page, you already have a good idea of how to write these kind of templates, but even if you haven't there's some great getting started guides on Joes page.