Quite a few things have happened since my previous blogger workflow update in March. Mailbrew is in, Apple News is out, forgot about Reddit and a few surprises. Let’s dig in.

The biggest change is the introduction of Mailbrew

Mailbrew comes in to complement News Explorer as a tool to help me more efficiently consume information that needs my attention. I’m really in love with this service. Please read my Mailbrew review here.

The side effect of the Mailbrew addition is that I’m reconsidering my use of Mailchimp. I’m currently suggesting my newsletter subscribers switch to my new newsletter coming out of Mailbrew, which is much more complete and better looking. It gathers my blog posts from my main blog’s RSS feed and posts coming out of Micro.blog’s RSS feed. I’m closely monitoring the situation. I’ll see how it goes.

My-Blogger-Workflow-2020-05.jpeg My blogger workflow as of 2020-05

Apple’s News for my content distribution

As I write this third workflow update, I’m still waiting for Apple to approve my feed submission, more than three months after my submission. Some people think Apple no longer allows user-generated content. Too bad. I decided to remove the service altogether from my workflow diagram for now. Who news Apple anyway, right?

What about Reddit

Curiously, I forgot to mention that my blog posts are cross-posted to my subreddit named /numericcitizen. I’m using IFTTT for this. For those who consume their content from Reddit, they can subscribe to my subreddit.

Cross-posting from Micro.blog to WordPress

The thing that I like the most about Micro.blog is its simplicity. It is very easy to post new thoughts, comments, etc. Sometimes, I want to put something out there without all the fuss and requirements of WordPress, like tags, SEO edits, feature images, etc.

But, for some of my posts on Micro.blog, I want them to appear on my main blog too. I recently experimented with a few things with IFTTT and a WordPress plugin to automate this task. But in each case, I didn’t like the results. On top of that, the WordPress plugin that I tried has not received an update in more than two years. There are some bugs with my current version of WordPress, which is 5.4.1. For me, it’s a no-go.

I decided to use a manual process with MarsEdit. This venerable macOS application is simple and can post to WordPress and Micro.blog. The latter is currently being added to an upcoming version. So far, it is working fine for me.

Cross-posting with MarsEdit means copy-pasting my text from one place to another and hitting the “post to blog” button. Simple enough.

Another tiny but really useful addition: Pager for Reddit

A bit like NewsExplorer and Mailbrew, Pager is an application that works for me in the background. The Pager app helps me stay updated with content I care about on Reddit. I should probably write a separate review. The design of this iPadOS application is great. Setting up filters is easy. It’s been a while since the last update; my hope is that this app is still being maintained. It’s a really cool app, and it is free!

An unexpected change of behaviour

As you probably know by now, Apple recently introduced a few new things regarding its iPad product line: iPadOS 13.4 with complete support for mouse and trackpad and the Magic Keyboard. These two simple things are unexpectedly changing my workflow. I happen to work much more often on my iPad than I used to. Second, my usage of Notion diverted my time spent in Ulysses. Notion is not a text processor per se, but it can act as one. I write most of my text in Notion and do the final write-up in Ulysses when I’m done with my research and my ideas are fully written down. Overall, I spend less time in Ulysses, but it’s still an essential application in my workflow.

Final words

I feel my blogger workflow is stabilizing a bit. No major changes are on the horizon, which is a good thing. Now, I’m concentrating on the content.