mandarine

Although a faithful participant to Lorelle’s blogging challenge, I was contemplating skipping the latest challenge, because I am really not that brilliant at tampering with Wordpress.

Your Blogging Challenge this week is to write a WordPress Tip. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be programming-code-from-hell technical, but it could if you are into such things.

And again, I finally realised that although they were slightly off-topic, I probably had original working habits that I might share. So, let us share.

Update: it turns out that this post is actually best suited to a later challenge topic by Lorelle: How do you blog ?. As I assume I am not allowed to take two challenges with one post, this means that I will have to do my homework and come back with real Wordpress tips.

I work offline so I can take my time

Have you ever had an email message on which you had spent almost an hour dumped down the internet sewers as your webmail user-interface had hung or crashed ? Have you ever lost a brilliant post to a dead connection or a false click while working within Wordpress ? Have you ever felt under the pressure of some kind of ticking clock when writing inside a web form ? Do you not prefer the peaceful, powerful and lasting frame of a local text editor ?

I have, I do.

I write offline. It helps me take my time, with neither the tempting presence of the ’send’ or ’submit’ button, nor the fuzzy ominous feeling that the link or the server can die any minute.

I save locally so I can work offline

I have three directories: ‘drafts’, ‘ready’, ‘posts’. In each, I have one directory per post, where I can keep any related material. It’s a totally manual management system, but the next tip will make you understand why I do not need automation that much.

It takes me ages to write a post

I loathe, detest and abhor text that looks like it has been written just as the ideas come into the writer’s head. My words may seem somewhat excessive, but my feeling is in direct relation to the proportion of such blogs in the blogosphere.

Writing should take time. Otherwise, all you get is stereotypes, dejà-vu, trivia.

Now, considering that it takes me four hours on average to finish a single post, there is no real need for automation. If I spend five minutes manually entering the markup code in a blog, this still represents an infinitesimal fraction of the work. And it helps the proofreading process.

I proofread thrice

I like to make bread. Kneading, leaving the dough to rise for half an hour, kneading again, leaving the dough to rise overnight, kneading again, leaving the dough to rise again, and finally baking. My bread has the taste of work and patience. I like to do likewise when I write. I leave the text to rest before further proofreading and improving, so that some mysterious text-leaven can ripen it, create tiny bubbles and a distinctive scent. I repeat the process thrice before posting.

I freeze posts for later

I picture my blog as a living organism, and I have to keep it alive and healthy by feeding it quality food on a regular basis. That’s what the ‘ready’ directory is all about: it is a freezer for posts, so that when I am in a hurry, I can double-click a good meal for my blog, lest it should starve. To be sure I can smoothe my workload, I need a big freezer. I have a month’s worth of frozen posts (healthy, organic, home-made), ready to be thawed on demand.

Read on

Who am I writing for ?

Who is my blogging persona ?

Lorelle says: ‘tell us a story’

Read away

How to write like a wanker

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