My Simple, Fast Blogging Workflow
Screenshot of my website’s homepage
As a 20-year-old, blogging isn’t something that comes up often in my friend circles. Everyone’s into social media, focusing on short-form content and posts that seem more about gaining attention than providing real value. But I’ve grown tired of social media and found inspiration in blogs. That led me to start my own.
Lacking advanced web development skills, I knew I needed a simple, low-friction setup that would let me focus on writing instead of dealing with technical hurdles. While I’ve gained a solid foundation in my web development course, the backend side is still unfamiliar territory, so self-hosting my blog felt like too much. After some research, I came across Blot, a platform that turns plain text files into a website. I write my posts in markdown, which was perfect since I had recently picked up the basics of Git. The setup is incredibly straightforward—just a text editor and my Mac’s terminal. It doesn’t get any easier than that!
From Medium to My Own Blog
Before launching my blog, I started writing on Medium because it’s super accessible, and the potential to reach a large audience was appealing. But over time, I wanted a space of my own—not just an account on another platform. I still post on Medium now and then, especially since I’ve gathered a few followers, but having my own blog feels much more personal. Surprisingly, managing both platforms isn’t as much of a hassle as I thought it would be.
My Simple Workflow
Blot is versatile, but for publishing blog posts, it’s as straightforward as it gets. I have a “Drafts” folder where I keep unfinished posts until they’re ready to go live. Here’s what my process looks like:
Open the terminal and navigate to my Drafts folder:
cd Repos/Blog/Drafts touch Post.md // Create a new markdown file open Post.md // Open the file in my default text editorWrite the post in markdown. If I don’t finish it in one go, I leave it in the Drafts folder and return to it later.
Tools for Writing
I’ve tried writing apps like iA Writer, MarkEdit, and even Obsidian (which is more for note-taking), but I never felt the need for their extra features. In keeping with my goal to simplify my digital life, I stuck with VSCode. It’s a great editor that I already use for other coding tasks, and its built-in markdown preview lets me see exactly how the post will look while I write.
Once the draft is done, I make adjustments and proofread. Since English isn’t my native language, I rely on tools like ChatGPT to help improve the flow and clarity of my posts, which also helps me improve my English.
When I’m happy with the draft, I move it from the Drafts folder to the live “Posts” folder:
mv Post.md ../PostsPublishing
After moving the file, it’s time for Git:
git add .
git commit -m "New blog post"
git pushThat’s it! The post goes live on my blog. If the post has images, I keep them organized in a folder called _images. Adding them to posts is just as simple in markdown:
Cross-posting to Medium
If I want to share the post on Medium as well, I just open the post in my browser, copy the text, and paste it into Medium’s editor. It even carries over the images, making the process quick and painless.
Final Thoughts
This workflow is fast, minimal, and frictionless. I love that I can manage everything locally from my Mac, and if I ever want to move my blog elsewhere, I have all my posts and images saved in common formats. Blogging this way feels natural, and it lets me focus on the writing, which is exactly what I wanted when I started this journey.