Behind the Scenes: Tools and workflow for blogging on blogger and writing for other reasons

TLDR; Write offline. Copy/Paste to online.

This blog used to be powered by blogger and in earlier forms on Wordpress.

I now use Hugo to build the blog and site statically.

I tend to read all my blog feeds through newsblur.com so I really don’t know what anyone’s blog looks like.

When I was using online hosting tools like Blogger, or Wordpress I learned never to write my posts in the online editor.

I thought I’d give a quick overview of my publishing and writing process because this is the same process I use when I’m working on and online editor - WordPress, Most Wikis, Jira, Patreon, etc.

I used to write in evernote using markdown, but I now use Obsidian and my obsidian data is automatically synchronized to one drive
to post HTML I copy paste markdown to dillinger.io
- “export as” “HTML”
- open downloaded .html file
- view source
- copy paste everything between <body></body> into the ‘HTML’ view in the online editor
if the online editor supports html copy and paste then I open the mardown in IntelliJ or Visual Studio Code and use the markdown preview to copy the formatted text
review in preview in blogger
publish
review published form

Why?

Web apps crash when I use them for editing
I have a record of when I wrote the blog post because it is part of my Daily Notes ’note’
Writing in markdown means I focus on the content rather than the formatting
multiple review points each one shows a slightly different ‘view’ of it, so I pick up different errors.

Web apps crash when I use them for editing

I’ve lost work in WordPress.
I’ve lost defects raised in Jira.
I’ve lost edits to wiki pages.

You name the system that allows you to ‘create’ and ’edit’ the ’things’ online, and I’ve lost edits to it when:

the browser crashed
the browser hung
the tab froze
I accidentally pressed some magic button on the mouse that made everything go crazy
I had too many tabs open and closed the browser forgetting that I hadn’t saved the data
etc.

I don’t trust online editing, so I do most of my writing offline in obsidian or a text editor.

Secondary Gains

A historic record of edits

Because I’m writing it offline I have a record of when I wrote the blog post because it is part of my Daily Notes ’note’.

I use the Day Notes feature in Obsidian to create a log every day. Previously I have also used a plain old .txt file with the date as the filename.

Content rather than format

I have no fancy icons and gimmicks to distract me from my writing.

Multiple Review Points.

Yes, my writing goes through multiple reviews and still ends up like this!

I first review the text in the Editor. Then in the preview of the Markdown Preview. Then in Preview in the online editor and then on the page after publishing.

Each stage shows a slightly different ‘view’ of it, so I pick up different errors.

If I do fix for formatting it is usually after publish, when it is live.