What is your blogging workflow?

Cool Workflows
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1

I know a lot of MPU users use IA writer or Ulysses to write their blog posts and then post them to their WordPress/Ghost/micro.blog sites. Ulysses even has a feature where they allow you to update a post as long as it was not modified by the web user interface .

I’m curious what people do after this point if you need to edit your post using the web UI of WordPress/Ghost/Micro.blog? Do you also make the same edits in your writing app of choice so that they are in sync, or do you treat the version on the web as the latest version and not maintain what is in the writing app any more?

I’m trying to find something that works for me. The update feature in Ulysses is nice, but if you need to use any of the blocks that are only available on the online WordPress or Ghost editor, then you can’t use the update feature anymore. Then you essentially have the current version of your post online and an old one in Ulysses.

2

I draft in BBEdit using HTML or in Bear and export as HTML.
I copy and paste the tags and text between the HTML Body tags.
Once I have the post in WordPress (on my own server) I ditch the draft.
I make final edits, or updates, to the WordPress site via the GUI.
I post HTML, and use the Classic Editor Plug-in, and edit via the HTML view.
I loathe Gutenberg and its blocks.

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3

I write blog posts in Ulysses and use Ulysses’ publish feature to create a draft in my WordPress blog when the post is almost ready to go. If I find a typo shortly after creating the draft, I may fix it in Ulysses. It’s handy that this change can be easily be reflected on WordPress. I make all subsequent changes/additions in WordPress. At this point, what’s in Ulysses becomes the almost-final draft and what’s in WordPress is the official post.

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4

I tried to use Ulysses on Ghost platform but as I am on the starter plan, it is not allowed :sleepy: so I copy and paste to the web editor. Most part of the process is painless but cannot say that for images

5

I write in Ulysses but I don’t post using it. Instead I export as a Word document. I do not use Gutenberg blocks, so copying and pasting from Word is easy. Not sure if that’s still true with Gutenberg or not.

I almost always edit the Word document before posting, and I likely also edit in WordPress before hitting the publish button, but it will be minor. I’m not concerned with having an exact match between what’s in Ulysses and what’s published online.

6

https://axle.design and https://fulcra.design are both currently published via Blot.im.

I use Blot’s Git option. So, once I’m done writing and editing my markdown files, I use a Git command to publish them.

That’s it!

Articles are usually written in Obsidian, but occasionaly iA Writer.

Worth noting: unlike every other poster yet, I only ever have one file for any post, and that file is the blog post. Zero exporting and importing, zero copying and pasting. There is no transfer of data between apps or services. I just love the parsimony.

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7

iA Writer or Ulysses →
Markdown (native from iA Writer, exported from Ulysses) →
a static site generator (Hugo, as of now) →
a Jamstack host (Cloudflare Pages, as of now).

8

For me, Ulysses is for writing and Wordpress is for editing and publishing.

What that boils down to is:

  1. Write the text, maybe include links, occasionally pictures in Ulysses.
  2. “Publish” to the blog as a draft.
  3. Everything else always happens in Wordpress. Editing, fine tuning, adding pictures, adding links, etc. before hitting Publish.
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9

I puckish everything via MarsEdit. Short stuff gets written in it, in Markdown. Longer stuff is written in Byword then copied into MarsEdit.

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10

While IA writer requires API keys for the publish feature, Ulysses does not. In other words, you can use ulysses on the starter plan as it does not require API keys to connect.

11

This is very clever, but this setup requires using something that reads Markdown files directly right? In other words, if you use WordPress or Ghost, this won’t work correct?

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12

Yeah, it’ll only work with Blot, Obsidian Publish, or the markdown static site generators.

(I’m sure if you looked hard enough you could find a Wordpress plugin for markdown, keep your actual site local on your computer, edit markdown files in that directory, and publish via FTP… but I have not heard of anyone doing that.)

13

oh, I did not realise this, good to know, really appreciate this

14

WoredPress.com has a Markdown block. For self-hosted, I use the JetPack plugin Markdown settings for my users who post in Markdown.

I wonder if the mail to post feature would work with Markdown? I have not tried it; ten years ago, the last time I tried mail to post, it was finicky at best.

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15

Thanks for that. Incidentally it corrects something I have been saying. I thought and have implied that my workflow is ‘complete’, it wasn’t and I guess there is always something to learn or new: and that makes sites and shows like these worth following. I read some journals because maybe once in five years I see something really useful, yeah my life is that slow now! :slightly_smiling_face:
Since I am going to have to learn to write properly to the interwebs and look at least not totally amateur this heads up is a revelation. Did you do a show on this that I missed? Writing to the web or html or whatever you call it?

16

We had an episode on Markdown a while back.

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17

People still blog? :thinking:

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18

I like this dichotomy very much. It’s a very good way of thinking about the blogging workflow. Thank you.

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19

Blot.im is so elegant. You can also do the same with Dropbox if git intimidates. Just move the markdown file to a specific folder and it publishes.

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20

You’ve just got to make sure you don’t put anything private in the folder by accident!

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