This meta blog is mostly about my content creation workflows. Photography is a big part of it, so I posted an update last week-end about it, after a two-year period.

My last photo processing update is more than two years old. Quite a few things have happened since 2020: many things are in, but many things are out too. I learned to use new services while dropping those that don’t fit my content creation journey. Let’s see what’s in and what’s out.

What’s in

• Glass, the new kid on the block of photo-sharing services, is in, and I like it a lot, as I wrote in “my experience with the service.”
• Exposure is in, and I love it so much that it will replace Smugmug as my official home. The main reason is the possibility of a great mix of images and text forming beautiful posts. All posts published on Exposure are cross-posted to Micro.blog.
• Adobe Spark was renamed to Adobe Express recently. I’m rarely using it, but when I do, I like this creative tool.
• On the hardware side, my iPhone 11 Pro was upgraded to an iPhone 13 Pro back in the fall of 2021, and I wrote in detail in Upgrading From the iPhone 11 Pro to iPhone 13 Pro — the Love Story Continues – Numeric Citizen Blog. In summary, it was a great upgrade for my photography creativity.

What’s out

I guess the following items should be added to my long list of “Things that don’t stick with me” article. Let’s see one by one the ousted service or app.

• My iPhone 13 Pro played a major role during my trip to Italy last summer. Two-thirds of my shots came through my iPhone 13 Pro device, one third with my Nikon D750. The trend is worrisome. Is my Nikon D750 on the way out? Not yet, but… I know it won’t be part of my next trip to South America this coming December.
• 500px is out (it previously replaced Flickr) and eventually was, in turn, replaced by Smugmug. The latter is on the way out too, and will be replaced by Exposure. The process has already started (read my Experience using the service recently published).
• Universe was a one-year experience but was later abandoned. It gave me the unique experience of building a simple website showing my urban exploration photographic work.
• Gurushots, a photo contest community, is out of my digital life. I still have an account but I no longer spend time on this website. It’s a big waste of time as fully documented GuruShots Tips and Tricks Guide — The 2021 Edition — Part I – Numeric Citizen Blog and in GuruShots Tips and Tricks Guide — The 2021 Edition — Part 2 – Numeric Citizen Blog.
• Camera+ is another victim of my workflow constant optimization. It was briefly replaced by the excellent Halide, but again it was dropped in favour of Apple’s stock Camera app. If I had an iPhone 14 Pro, I would probably switch back to Halide as it offers an easy way to turn on and off the 48-megapixels camera mode.
• Also out is my content on Adobe Portfolio (I wrote a small review about the service a while back). While the tied integration with Adobe Lightroom is nice, it wasn’t easy to create a website to my liking, and I eventually dropped the service. Exposure is a photo-sharing service that goes way beyond Adobe Portfolio.
• My use of Adobe Lightroom Classic has significantly decreased since my last workflow update. My go-to photo editing app is Adobe Lightroom (both on iPad or M1 MacBook Air), and Pixelmator Photo on the iPad comes in second. The latter was extensively used during my summer trip to Italy.
• I also stopped using Skylum Aurora HDR & Luminar as my need for HDR is nonexistent (it used to be the case when I was doing urban exploration, which is no longer the case, sadly).
• On the hardware side, I sold my 2017 4K Retina iMac (read “Remembering My Story of Owning The 4K Retina 21.5 inches iMac — 2017-2021 – Numeric Citizen Blog”) and bought an M1 Mac mini shortly after it came out on the market. I wrote a must-read article on how to migrate Adobe Lightroom Classic from one Mac to another. A few months later, I got an M1 MacBook Air. Both of these machines are simply incredibly mighty.

Miscellaneous

I’m still using Unsplash for selecting photos for addition to my content when it makes sense. I contribute from time to time, and that ok. I’m not investing much time in selecting photo content for publication on Unsplash. Sometimes, less is more.

I used to have an Instagram account (The Perfect Imperfctions) and mostly stopped posting on it. Time is a finite resource, and I have to make choices on where I spend my time creating new and meaningful content. One thing is for sure, Instagram is not what it used to be for photography lovers like me.

Concluding words

My photography workflow is constantly changing but maybe not as often as my blogger workflow. It has been more than two years since my last workflow update, and a lot has changed in two years. I don’t see major changes in the future, as I’d like to keep things a bit more stable for now and use my creativity to make good use of my toolset.

I’ve been making videos since early June of 2022. I wasn’t destined to produce content for YouTube as I’m more of a “written words” type of guy. So far, I have made 18 videos totalling more than two hours and a half of viewing time. Along the way of producing those videos, I learned a lot, and at this point, I feel pretty satisfied with my workflow. Here are my gathered observations and notes about my endeavour.

• Craft is a great application for helping me stay organized and support my video creation workflow. I’m using a template for each new video with things to do, research notes, documentation, video script, and post-process steps are all part of the template. I also maintain a table of past and future videos. I’m very happy with Craft in that respect.
• I did learn a few things about Craft along the way of producing these videos, for example, while preparing the video about explaining the differences between a document and a page in Craft, I learned that dragging a page to the navigation pane on the left portion of Craft main window, the page gets converted to a document.
• As much as I love my M1 MacBook Air, exporting videos using ScreenFlow can take up to an hour. It’s the use case that makes me wish I had a more powerful MacBook Pro.
• At Episode 15, I decided to use an external 1TB SanDisk SSD drive to store all my past and present episodes instead of my MacBook air internal drive. This way, I can plug the drive on my M1 Mac mini when I’m ready to export a finished video. Remember that a MacBook Air has no fan, and after 10 or 15 minutes of intensive use, the Mac will throttle down the CPU to prevent overheating. There is no such thing on the Mac mini; the CPU can run at max power for as long as needed, shortening the video rendering time.

• Having an external drive to store my videos also enabled me to use my Mac mini which uses an Apple Studio Display which brings much more space to work with while doing video editing.

• Doing the video montage on the Apple Studio Display helps a lot and helps me reduce the time it takes to create a new rendering.
• A typical folder containing a recorded episode contains the Screenflow document, the episode header image in full and lower resolution and the resulting .MP4 video file, ready for upload in YouTube Studio.
• Speaking of Screenflow: it’s a great application, but it is afflicted with a few bugs here and there. Updates to fix those are slow in coming. At some point, I contemplated the idea of switching to Final Cut Pro but doing so would still require me to keep Screenflow. So I’m sticking to it. Oh and I don’t like iMovie. Maybe I should look back at LumaFusion? But I don’t want to do production on the iPad.
• With each video, I’m perfecting something in my process or in the final product. My best montage can be found in Craft Doesn’t Need to be Notion and “Learn the Differences Between Documents and Pages.” I’m recording with a 4K Logitech Brio webcam, but I’m planning to use the Opal C1 webcam when the software gets more mature, and bugs are fixed. I’ll update this post after putting it to work and compare it with the Logitech.
• It took me a while to understand how chapters on YouTube work. Publishing from within Screenflow doesn’t export chapter markers (another Screenflow bug?). To get my markers exported, I need to first export them to an .MP4 file, then manually upload them to YouTube. That’s annoying.
• Google, unsurprisingly, offers a comprehensive plethora of analytics. It’s really a rabbit hole for those like me who love numbers. So far, I’m happy with the numbers, except for people retention. Surprisingly, people don’t stick around for a long time at my videos. Is my content that bad? Is this a major trend on YouTube or something that is closely tied to my content? Looking at my comments and likes ratio, these are vastly positive and aren’t indicating a problem with the content and the visual quality of my work. The retention time tends to increase as I produce longer videos.
• It makes a noticeable difference when posting a new video is coupled with a post on Reddit, Circle and Slack, as well as Buffer on Twitter.
• Being active on Reddit, Slack and Circle helps a lot to increase awareness about my videos, and I’m getting many new subscribers each day. On average, I’m getting about three new subscribers per day, which could mean that by the end of my first year of publishing content on YouTube, I could reach close to 1000 subscribers. This looks unrealistic. If I ever get past 500 subscribers, I’ll be happy.
• When I’m referring to one of my blog articles in the episode notes, I do get visitors. YouTube seems a great way to help grow visitor traffic.
• According to my Linktr.ee analytics, I can see positive impacts on visitors and conversion rates.
• Credibility seems to be building over time as I’m posting on a regular basis new content. I’m getting a score of close to a 100% likes ratio, which is a good indication that I’m doing good, but is this sustainable?
• I don’t pay too much attention to time release timing of a new video. YouTube processing into 4K takes forever. I tend to release a new video on the day after it has been uploaded and transcoded by the YouTube back-end.
• Most popular video: “Planning my week ahead using Craft Daily Notes.“ People are looking for productivity hacks, and I should probably do more of these videos in the future.

You can view a behind-the-scenes video here.

My previous blogger workflow update was in March 2021. Quite many things have happened since then. It’s time for another update. Buckle up because this is a big one, and enjoy the ride!

What’s in

For 2021, I was expecting a year without many changes to my blogger workflow, and yet, I was in for quite a few surprises.

• Probably some of the most important additions this year are Toggl, Timery, and Focused Work to track my time while creating content (consider bookmarking and reading “Why and How I’m Tracking Time With Toggl” if you want to know all the details.) Tracking my time does take some time, but I like the results.
• Hello Ghost (again)! I started experimenting with Ghost during the 14-day trial period, during which all features were available for testing. I started building automation with the Zapier integration. After the trial period ended, the integration with Zapier stopped working for some reason. I quickly found out that many features like custom themes, custom integrations, and commenting support are only available with certain subscription tiers. Commenting on each blog post isn’t available by default unless I’m on the Creator tier and customize one of the provided themes. To use Commento, I needed an API key, as well as a custom theme and a custom integration. And moreover, a custom version of Casper with some script invocation was added to enable Commento integration. Forking such a built-in theme requires staying in sync with the official theme, as Ghost updates them from time to time to benefit from all Ghost’s additions. Finally, I visited Google Search Console to add my Ghost website for better SEO management and optimizations. I became a subscriber at the entry-level tier for $9 per month, but I quickly realized that the $25 was the one I needed (consider bookmarking and reading “Moving From Substack to Ghost–My Experience” for more details.)
• iPadOS 15 introduced support for Safari extensions. Working on the iPad now feels less and less a compromise, as Grammarly support and many other extensions are now available. For people depending on the iPad, it is a much-welcomed addition. Unexpectedly, in 2021, my workflow shifted towards the MacBook Air (read “Coming Out of a Rabbit Hole and Buying Two MacBook Air”).
• Pocket made a comeback in addition to Readwise (consider bookmarking and read “Instapaper vs Pocket — Which Read Later Service Is Better for Me”). Pocket is well-known and doesn’t need much introduction. According to Readwise website: “Readwise makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights.” Resurfacing previously highlighted text snippets is fun and helps build a lasting memory of past readings. I added Readwise as a source to my weekly newsletter built using Mailbrew.
• Using the Readwise sharing feature to repost quotes on Twitter is handy. I don’t use it too often, though.

• WordPress plugin: I’m using the paid version of “WB to Buffer” for reposting previously published posts to Buffer. With another WordPress plugin named “Feedzy” it imports RSS feeds from Substack and Microblog and creates “Also on my …” type of blog posts automatically. It didn’t generate much traction and added too much noise to my original content feed. This was disabled after a few months when I moved out of Substack.
• I unexpectedly started using Matter when Matter officially became public. Matter seems to have gained some traction over Pocket as the best read-later service. Compared to Pocket, it creates great link posts that can be saved or shared online, just like Readwise and Pocket.
• I became a subscriber of Typefully (typefully.com), a web application for writing threads on Twitter. Some features of Typefully are similar to Buffer’s, like being able to schedule tweets. I use it to write threads to complement some of my articles. The latest example of things to watch in 2022. Finally, Typefully brings great engagement analytics.

What’s out

• My experience with HEY World didn’t last long. I’ve been moving out of HEY World to go to Substack for my Friday Notes* and Photo Legend* Series (consider bookmarking and reading “Migrating My Content From Hey World to Substack”). I can say the same thing about my Substack experience. These services, while attractive, didn’t stick in my workflow.
• HEY is no longer on the workflow diagram. HEY doesn’t really contribute to my blogger workflow. Most of my readings don’t happen there anyway, even if HEY provides newsletters dedicated feed, one of the tent pole features of the mail client.
• As mentioned earlier, Substack is out. The popularity of a platform doesn’t guarantee the popularity of your content.
• I closed my Telegram account. Read more here to learn why. I’m contemplating Signals instead.
• WordPress Plugin: Coblock was disabled to remove overhead in webpage processing. It didn’t make a difference, though.

In progress

• I do spend more time maintaining my digital garden in Craft all year long. You can find a lot of stuff in there.
• I’m still trying to figure out how to use Apple’s Quick Notes feature in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. I may end up having no use for this after all, which is too bad because, on paper, the idea is cool.
• I’m always thinking about using Apple’s Reminders in my workflow. Reminders have improved quite a lot over the years, but occasionally, I think Craft could take over if table support was better (sorting, tagging, etc.). The more things I’ll do with Craft, the more synergy it creates. I’ll watch Craft’s evolution in 2022, and maybe make a move.

Things to improve

• Adding text clipping in Craft would be so helpful. There are shortcuts that work with Craft that do just that, but I don’t find the experience very satisfying.
• Speaking of Apple’s Shortcuts, I do find more use cases for them to speed up a few key tasks, like setting up my work session after logging into my account on macOS.
• Templates in Craft to kickstart the creation of a new article would be very handy. It is expected in 2022, in an upcoming update in 2022 or via an extension.
• As much as I would like to see the addition of tags in Craft, implementing this feature could be tricky. Where should we be able to tag things? In a page’s properties, inline in the page’s content?
• I have to work on my reading workflow and decide what I’m going to do with Pocket, Readwise and Matter. Pocket will probably go as it is entirely covered with Matter.

Miscellaneous

• My usage of ** Craft ** has significantly increased this year. It is becoming my second brain (Fun fact: find out the name of my MacBook Air). Lately, I decided to use the Craft calendaring feature to prepare a weekly plan containing my content creation objectives. As the week progresses, I keep it up-to-date and check items off the list. It’s a satisfying experience, trust me.
• I’m still using Notion to keep my old data and connect Matter to Notion to save my reading highlights automatically. As soon as a Craft extension allows me to pump my data out of Notion, I might be done with Notion once and for all. Notion is not shown on my workflow diagram but will be in an upcoming post covering my reading workflow.
• Twitter Revue: I had a Revue account before Twitter bought them. Now that it is integrated into their platform, I experimented with it (read a sample issue here). I love Twitter Revue, but I have yet to find a unique and useful use case for it. I currently have five subscribers.
• Furthermore, I should consider closing my Flipboard account. I never go there; it’s not what it used to be, and I don’t get any traffic from this platform.
• Google News, where I cross-post my main blog content, could also go down the drain. I don’t get any traction there.
• Finally, Tumblr is another place where I cross-post content. Tumblr has become a ghost town in recent years, and it doesn’t help at all. Even if cross-posting is done automatically using WordPress’ built-in feature, I should consider stopping using this platform.
• In my previous workflow update, I considered moving my Photo Legend Series to Hey, which I did for a short while. Now, it is hosted on Ghost, along with my Friday Notes Series and monthly newsletter. I like consolidating stuff sporadically.
• Since getting a MacBook Air, my iPad Pro usage significantly dropped. The Mac is the power user tool. I cannot be as productive on an iPad.
• I worked a lot on my WordPress blog to improve its score on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, as documented here. Did it make a difference? According to my blog visitor statistics, the answer is no. Here is a strange thing: if I run PageSpeed tests twice in a row, the final score is quite different. Usually, the second try gives much better results. How much trust should I put in these results? Another observation: my score for this blog, a static website, is the worst. Is Blot hosted on a low-end performance tier in the cloud?
• I’ve been using Commento with Blot to add comments support on this blog. I never got a single comment! It’s a high price to pay for a service that nobody takes advantage of. Maybe it will be a better fit with my newsletter website on Ghost? Time will tell.
• IFTTT still plays an important role in my publishing workflow as it works with Buffer to help me control the cross-posting flow. Each day, I spend some time managing the Buffer queue to spread out posts to be published. I also use IFTTT to cross-post anything I post on Reddit to my Twitter channel on Buffer. Buffer has a new calendar view that helps you see a timeline overview of all future publishing. Buffer isn’t cheap, but I like what it does for me. Cross-posting content does help create traffic and improves engagement.

Well, that was a long one. I want to walk you through my reading workflow for an upcoming article. I read a lot of stuff online, and many applications and services are involved here. Reading is the source of my inspiration for most of my work as a content creator. I think there are some interesting things to write about. Stay tuned, and see you in 2022.

Getting ready for the upcoming Google May 2021 algorithm update. See how I improved my Page Insights score by more than 225%.

In May, Google will tweak its ranking algorithm again by including new experience metrics into the equation. Those changes were first announced back in May 2020. According to a recent post on Yoast’s blog:

In May 2021, Google will add Core Web Vitals as ranking factors in its algorithm. This means your site’s page speed and page loading time will impact your rankings.

And, from Liz Moorehead of ImpactPlus:

…these “page experience signals” will be rolling out in May 2021 as part of an algorithm update, meaning how well you measure up against these page experience factors will positively or negatively affect your rankings after this update takes effect.

After reading this, I was expecting the worst. I felt like it was like a storm waiting to strike. The feeling is not really cool, a feeling of “deja vue”. In November 2019, something happened to my blog visitors analytics: it dropped by more than 50% in just a few days. I was astonished and didn’t really know what happened or if I broke something with my blog. I did some research and found out that it was the consequence of a ranking algorithm change by Google¹, an update that put my blog at a disadvantage².

Preparing for this upcoming change, I had to find ways to minimize the impacts on my main blog, fearing I would lose traffic again.

The starting point

At first, when I started to look into this matter, I discovered the pagespeed insights tool from Google³. Don’t miss this insightful article about why PageSpeed Insights is an important tool. As you might expect, I tried it against my websites. According to this tool, my main blog didn’t score well, both from a mobile user perspective and a desktop user perspective, albeit it did a bit better for the latter. Both scores weren’t in the “green range”. I ran the test many times, and sure enough, on average, the scores were bad. Consider the following two scorecards.

That’s not good, but it serves as the starting point. I had to make improvements on all fronts. Does all WordPress websites need to be slow? They certainly have a bad reputation in that respect. As a Business Plan subscriber on WordPress.com, I get to run my website on its own virtual instance. This makes a big difference. Yet, the next steps weren’t clear to me.

Improving the mobile experience

The worst score shows that mobile users were the most affected. How many visitors come from the desktop, and how many come from mobile devices? According to my Plausible analytics, surprisingly, most of my visitors come from desktops, not mobile devices, as shown in the following table. Yet, the score needed some improvements.

A big change was to remove support for Google’s AMP page format. AMP pages aren’t the best idea for the open web and, according to my testing, made my website run slower. Disabling AMP support in WordPress.com is as simple as turning off a switch. After doing so, I could already observe big improvements in loading time, but that wasn’t enough to get my score into the green zone. What else could I do?

Revisiting my WordPress plug-in usage

WordPress is well-known for its support of plug-ins. The more plug-ins installed, the higher the possibility of a slower-than-normal website. It’s easy to have a plug-in overload. For my optimization work, I had to revisit the usefulness of each of them.

I simplified my blog’s main page a bit by removing a rarely used footer widget. This widget allowed people to subscribe to my Mailbrew newsletter. This change improved response time quite a bit. For some reason, the Mailbrew widget contained many scripts calling Mailbrew’s home, which increased latency.

The Twitter timeline widget was also removed; I don’t think people cared much about my latest tweets showing up there⁴. By removing the sidebar on the main page, content retakes the center stage in a cleaner page layout.

The IndieWeb support plug-ins (three in total: IndieWeb, Micropub, IndieAuth) were disabled because I suspected they could negatively impact the performance. After re-testing the website, the speed didn’t change much; those plugins were re-enabled⁵. Media Cleaner and Mailchimp support were no longer needed and were removed, too, but I don’t think they negatively impacted my website loading time.

Other plug-ins like CoBlocks, add a richer set of block types in the WordPress editor. This plug-in adds a few scripts and CSS according to my research. By disabling this plug-in, some of my posts would break, not that there are many of them but still, some care is required here.

Adding two optimization services to my toolbox

In “How to speed up WordPress”, I discovered two paying services: the first one is WP Rocket, to optimize many internal aspects of my WordPress website and Imagify to optimize images.

After reading about WP Rocket’s capabilities, I installed the plug-in. After installing the plug-in, WP Rockets does many optimizations behind the scenes without any intervention. Then, I poked around the provided features and started to enable options one by one, carefully testing my website at each step, as suggested in the plug-in documentation, to see if anything was broken. At each step, everything was loading perfectly. At the end of this process, I did a new round of performance testing using the page insight tool, and to my delight, my score went up even more.

In summary, the following options in WP Rocket were enabled:

• Cache / Enable caching for mobile devices
• Cache / Enable caching for logged-in WordPress users
• File Optimization / Minify CSS files
• File Optimization / Optimize CSS delivery
• File Optimization / Minify JavaScript files
• File Optimization / Load JavaScript deferred
• File Optimization / Delay JavaScript execution
• Media / LazyLoad for images
• Media / LazyLoad for iframes and videos
• Media / Add missing image dimensions
• Preload cache

All in all, I’m pleased with WP Rocket. The optimizations may not provide a night and day difference, but they do add up to make my website a better web citizen.

Next up is a companion service to WB Rocket, Imagify. It is simple to install and configure. The free version allows for optimizing 500 MB of image content. I went with the unlimited version so I could process all my published content. It took 12 hours to process about 5 GB of images. The end result is that my image library size was reduced by 62%. That’s a big improvement. As expected, optimized images look pretty much the same as before.

Other considerations

I considered using a content delivery network service (CDN), but after much thought, some internet research, I decided not to do so. My blog doesn’t use a lot of heavy content like videos, only some pictures and many screenshots. I don’t think this would have made much of a difference⁶ for most of my visitors⁷. The following is a Lighthouse test result for speed access according to geographic locations. The next graphic shows where my visitors are coming from.

My website performance by geographic locations

My website visitors’ origins

My WordPress theme is flexible and allows for many customizations. This means a lot of CSS is involved. I’m also using custom fonts that add some weight to the website. According to SolarWinds’ Pingdom tool, the main page of my blog weighs about 784K, where 40% is for the fonts, 27% for images and 26% for scripts and CSS. Repeated tests show the main page loads in about 3 seconds or less. This doesn’t fit with my observation when I’m visiting my website from my machine, which seems to load faster than in 3 seconds. Three seconds isn’t bad, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m not planning to undo my font selection, as the standard ones are ugly as hell.

Another step was to look at Google-related stuff. Since I’m using Plausible Analytics, references to Google Analytics were no longer needed and were removed from WordPress.com configuration settings found in the JetPack settings. Good riddance.

Final scores and looking forward

I’m happy with all the improvements I’ve made to my website. The improvements were the most impressive on the mobile version. It could be better, but I’m utterly happy with where the score stands now.

Keep in mind that WordPress-based sites are dynamically generated. A lot of processing happens behind the scenes when hitting the homepage with a browser. My microblog and the site you are reading are static-generated and fast to load. But, if you compare the loading times of all these sites, you’ll find that they are comparable.

Now, the big question: Am I ready for Google’s 2021 algorithm update? I think so. Will my optimization efforts be rewarded? Who knows? Google is like a beast that we have to feed, and please, who knows if he will like the meal served this time.

By increasing my website’s score for mobile users by as much as 225% and by more than 25% for desktop users, and by meeting most of Google’s requirements for “website providing a great user experience,” I hope that the upcoming Google changes in May will be beneficial.

Recently, I had a chance to read and participate in two different discussions about which app, feature or service is better for a specific task or use case. In the first case, someone was asking about Ulysses handling of Markdown links. The question triggered a really enlightening discussion about how Ulysses, and many more writing apps for that matter, was good or not at certain things like Markdown handling in general¹. In the second case, Lee Peterson exposes his disdain for being forced into using the block-based Gutenberg editor, replacing the venerable classic editor. Again, a simple blog post triggered a great exchange about where WordPress seems to be heading².

Regarding Ulysses, I’m a fan of its Markdown handling. The fact that I don’t see Markdown tags while writing is a big plus for me. However, I wouldn’t mind having the option to toggle this feature on and off so I can appreciate Markdown in all its glory. As for the Gutenberg editor, I admit I wasn’t a fan at first. But over time, it grew on me to the point where I wouldn’t consider going back. The block-based editor is also the approach Craft is taking, and it’s working its magic.

Ultimately, the beauty of these discussions lies in the diversity of opinions. It’s not about who’s right or wrong but about each of us finding the app that best suits our needs and preferences for the task at hand.

This is the first post on Numeric Citizen I/O about my blogger workflow. This website’s mission is metablogging, which means writing about the tools and services that I use as a blogger and content creator. I hope you enjoy the ride here. This is the most comprehensive update yet. In this workflow release, as of 2021-03, there are many important changes. Here is a run-down, in no particular order.

1. First, as stated earlier, I created a new website about meta-blogging. It’s called Numeric Citizen I/O, which is hosted on Blot¹. That’s where I’m talking about the tools and experience as a blogger and content creator. The domain name is hosted on GoDaddy. Domains ending with .io aren’t cheap, here are possible reasons why. I’m super happy with Blot. Their support is excellent. I learned how to properly use Git in my endeavour. I’m using Commento as a commenting service which is privacy friendly.
2. Linktr.ee: is now my virtual visitor card. Super easy to set up. Lots of formatting options. Not cheap, though. In the past, I had an account on about.me which I closed because of its lack of formatting features. I’m pleased with Linktr.ee.
3. Gone is the venerable MarsEdit on my Mac. Ulysses version 22 supports publishing to Micro.blog². I do like MarsEdit, but I prefer Ulysses which is available on all Apple platforms.
4. Gone is Linky, from my iOS devices. Used to be a great app for sharing links on Twitter and text highlighting. As my Twitter usage has dramatically reduced in recent months, I no longer need it. The app is no longer being updated, apparently, which is also contributing to its demise.
5. Now in: Nova and Working Copy for publishing to Blot. Nova was recently reviewed on MacStories.net. I think it is important to show support for those developers who care to create real Mac software, not just ports of Windows apps.
6. Now enabled is the automatic archive of my Micro.blog content to a Github repo. I like the idea of having my content available on Github. Using Nova, I cloned the repo on my Mac too. From time to time, I make pull requests to update my local repo.
7. Craft is my new note-taking application, replacing Notion. Read my recent article on Craft. I still have content on Notion and I don’t know ye how and when I’ll be able to take it out. I’m waiting for their APIs release. I’m in no rush.
8. Speaking of Craft, I’m using it to maintain a digital garden which can be found here. It’s super easy to nurture and the extensive formatting options of Craft allows me to have a decent website. You can leave comments by the way!
9. Apple’s shortcuts, not shown here, play a small part in my workflow. One of them is to generate quotes from a web page by selecting the text that I want to quote. Another one is to create a page in Craft from a website. It’s very handy and covers a use case not available in Craft but which is available in Notion.
10. I restarted my Vimeo page as an experiment and for storing short clips of user-interface micro-interactions from apps that I use and like a lot. You’ll find many examples from Craft. Vimeo is not cheap. Microinteractions are created using the screen recording feature of iOS, but are converted to GIF when needed in a blog post using IMGplay, an excellent GIF maker available on all Apple platforms.
11. I’m still super happy with Plausible, a Google Analytics replacement. You can have a look at my visitor statistics for this site, for example.

Under consideration

Reeder for maintaining a list of read later articles. I could use Craft for this instead. I created a page that contains all the bookmarks. This page is accessible from my digital garden, too. I like Reeder’s design for reading, though. Maybe there is a more profound problem: read later features like the one with Safari or with an app like Reeder don’t make me read more. I tend to forget about things I save in these lists. So, why give a damn about those app and service? If I don’t read an article that I find interesting in the first few hours or days, I’ll never read it. I’ll give myself some more time to think about this one.

Readwise: It is a fascinating service, but as my Twitter usage has dropped significantly, its usefulness is uncertain. Syncing highlights from Medium is interesting, though, because I’m a big reader of Medium content. The iPad app is lacking in certain areas. There is no Safari Extension that I’m aware of. Let’s see where it all goes from here.

A return of Things. Craft is able to export and import data to and from Things but not from Apple’s Reminder. The problem is that Things doesn’t have an URL field, which I depend on in Apple’s Reminder. I asked the Craft developers if support for Reminders was coming. It is coming. Things won’t make it back, I think.

Using Square on Linktr.ee to enable tips from my readers. Too bad only Square is supported, I would have preferred Stripes on which I already have an account setup to receive Medium payments. Furthermore, my experience shows that people don’t tip bloggers. Nobody really cares to support marginal content creator like me. Oh well, getting my rewards from the journey, instead.

Moving my Photo Legend Series to HEY World. I think it would be interesting to restart this photo series but this time on HEY World. It is super easy to publish, much easier than WordPress. That’s enough to consider this move.

Closing remarks

That’s it for this blogger workflow update. Things are starting to settle a bit. I don’t see major changes in the foreseeable future. I hope you made some discoveries with this blog post. Let me know in the comment section.

I bought Nova in support of real Mac software developers

So, I decided to buy Nova, the best client for editing and publishing content to this Blot website using Git and Markdown. MacStories published a review of Nova just yesterday, emphasizing that Nova feels like a real MacOS application. I felt the need to show my support to Nova developers. We should celebrate great Mac apps. There are free alternatives like Atom or Visual Source Code, but they feel weird on the Mac.

Update: 2024-05-20: I no longer use Nova since I migrated from Blot to Craft & Micro.blog. I no longer need this type of editor.

I’m using Git to maintain this blog, which runs on Blot. Up until now, my Git knowledge has come from YouTube. Today, I came across this Git beginner’s guide that I wish I had on hand before starting this blog. The nice thing about this guide is that it covers the command line commands plus a GUI-based tool, Atom, in that case. I’m mostly a GUI type of guy, but it’s always interesting to see what happens behind the scenes when interacting with Git.

Editing and publishing on the go is a must, after all.

This weekend, I’m away from home. I thought I could get away with it and skip editing Blot posts on the go on the iPad. I was wrong. As I wrote at length here, the jury is still out on the best way to achieve this. For now, on the iPad, Working Copy is the best GIT client, and Ulysses is my preferred text editor. They have to work together.

So, I sat down and cloned the Git repo from Blot to my iPad using Working Copy. It took about a minute to complete. After confirming everything was set up correctly, I created an empty text file with the .md extension in Working Copy. From the Files.app, I tapped on it, and sure enough, Ulysses was launched. The file is shown in the “External Files” section in the library view. The publishing process went smoothly via a Working Copy commit followed by a push¹.

This blog post was not just created, but also edited, previewed, and published from my iPad, away from home. I guess I found a satisfying solution, and it feels great to have accomplished this.

Thinking about text editor apps. Following a recent article from Jason Snell about finding the best markdown editor for the iPad, I started thinking about using Ulysses for all my text editing needs. Is it the best tool for all use cases? Probably not. But it is cross-platform, and for me, it’s a must. As I write this blog post, I’m using Nova text editor on my Mac to start editing, finishing in Ulysses. It depends. I’m unsure how my text editor selection happens when I start writing a new blog post. Maybe I should do the same as Mr. Snell, build a table of much-needed features, and see if Ulysses still fits my needs. On my to-do list, I plan to write a blog post about GIT clients for the iPad. Working Copy is a very popular one and includes a text editor. Jason Snell’s article refers to Textastic too. They compete against Ulysses, but the latter doesn’t do Git stuff. Like many blogs, it may be okay to use a different text editor, depending on the platform. I could use iA Writer on the iPad for this blog and Ulysses for the rest. Or maybe Working Copy would be a better choice because I’ll need to use it to push updates here anyway? As you can see, I’m constantly reflecting on the tools I use or plan to use and my workflow. It’s a never-ending process. Back to Ulysses. For now. Update #1: I’m not alone in rethinking my text editor choices. Chris Hannah, too.