Since moving to WordPress, I haven’t changed much with how I write blog posts. But there are more tools available now, so I thought I’d revisit my workflow.
The key is being able to work on a blog post from any device and any text editor. I have a Notes folder on Dropbox that I use for draft blog posts and notes about other projects. When I have an idea for a post, I create a new note there and either start writing it, or leave a link, quoted text, or a few topic ideas to come back to later.
On the iPhone, I use Editorial. On the iPad, I use Byword, since Editorial hasn’t been updated for the iPad Pro yet. And on my Mac, I use Justnotes. All of these sync from the same Dropbox folder. They are plain text files, so I can edit from anywhere and they’ll survive platform and hosting changes over the years.
If I’m on my Mac, when I finish a post I’ll preview it in Marked and then copy it into MarsEdit for posting. On iOS, I’ll copy it into the WordPress iOS app. For microblog posts from iOS, I use an unreleased iPhone app that’s part of the microblogging stuff I’ve been working on.
I’ve also been using the Calypso-based WordPress UI a lot lately. I usually work on several blog posts at once, and if a few are ready to go at once, I schedule them to go out later in the day or over the next couple of days. WordPress’s web UI makes keeping track of scheduled posts pretty nice.
It hasn’t been all perfect switching between multiple apps, though. I noticed today that some of my new posts, which I always write in Markdown, were converted to HTML for publishing (likely by Calypso on WordPress.com). But for the most part, no regrets switching over to WordPress. The added flexibility and future-proofing have been good.
