It’s been quite a long time since my previous content creator workflow update, more than a year actually, back in November 2023. With 2024 coming to an end, it’s time for a detailed update. First, consider the following overall diagram, then continue reading.

An overview of my digital tools and workflows.

Outlining purposes: Zavala, a free open-source outliner, is nearly perfect for outlining YouTube video production. I don’t do detailed scripting before recording videos, but I like to create the outline. I was using Zavala until the release of Mindnote Next, but this might change. Mindnote is a superbly designed mind-mapping application that also supports the creation of outlines, which are more beautiful than those created in Zavala. One of Zavala’s strengths is that it is free but also easily exports a document into Craft via a simple drag-and-drop. I will see how it goes in 2025.

Presentation purposes: iA Presenter offers a unique approach to presentation creation. I rarely use presentation software outside of my day job, but when I do, it supports me while recording a YouTube video. A recent update to iA Presenter introduced an online presentation sharing feature that works really well and is beautifully implemented. For 2025, I’ll try to take advantage of this. iA Presenter is such a unique take on a very old software category I must keep trying to find a use for it.

Website site analytics: Tinylytics joins Plausible in my toolset. I was happy with Plausible until this year, but the developer of Tinylytics is also the developer of Scribble.pages, a blog hosting service I really like. I decided to subscribe to Tinylytics as a support gesture for all his hard work building simple yet valuable web services.

Web bookmark management: I’m happy to introduce Anybox. Sure, it’s not raindrop.io, but it’s a great native Mac app, also available on the iPad and the iPhone. That’s all I need. My collection has less than four hundred bookmarks, all organized using folders and tags. It’s nothing fancy but practical.

RSS feeds publishing: FeedPress is a simple yet effective way for adding a unified feed in front of all my different websites (Ghost, Micro.blog, Scribbles, Medium). Also, I offer an RSS megafeed that encompasses all my other individual RSS feeds, which can be found here: https://feeds.numericcitizen.me. The added value of using FeedPress is to enable RSS feed analytics, which other publishing platforms like Micro.blog, for example, won’t provide.

Podcasting purposes: Micro.blog is now my podcast hosting service of choice. The feature is built-in and very simple to configure and use. There are two ways for me to share a podcast episode: either use the narrated post feature of Micro.blog or use a traditional workflow, build an audio file using Screenflow, post-process it in Adobe Podcast, and convert it from WAV to MP3 using Permute before uploading the audio file to Micro.blog.

Files-hosting and cloud storage service: Dropshare will upload a file to Backblaze cloud storage, and Short.io will shorten the resulting URL. All my files are shared under the following domain name: https://go.numericcitizen.me, using my custom branding. Here is an example: https://go.numericcitizen.me/PLx2st2Y. This workflow was implemented in 2024 and works well. The only thing is that I don’t use it often enough, and it can compete with CleanShot Cloud, which I use more often when sharing screenshots or short video clips. Those media files are using the following URL: cloud.numericcitizen.me.

Specialized blog hosting: Micro.blog. I created a metablog on Micro.blog using one of the five blogs in my Micro.blog subscription. As you can conclude, I’m increasing my foothold on Micro.blog because it is cheap, effective and unique on the market.

Read-later service: I removed Omnivore because the service is no longer being developed, and I decided to focus on Inoreader instead. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a cheaper one. I still depend on Readwise to sync text highlights from Inoreader.

Another blog hosting service, Scribbles, was. I’m using it to host short-form posts called Blips or longer ones using the /Now spirit under the following URL: https://blips.numericctizen.me.

One-page website hosting: Numeric Citizen Hub on Micro.blog has replaced my Linktr.ee page. I’m again focusing on Micro.blog for many of my online publishing needs while saving some money along the way. This one-page website is for hosting my visitor card, sort of. Micro.blog offers support for one-page websites, so I’m taking advantage of this.

When saving bookmarks on Miicro.blog, I take advantage of text highlights while reading the article that Micro.blog is keeping from the bookmark. Text highlights are synced to Readwise, too.

Website for my supporters: For prople who wants to show their support for my work, I have built a Ko-fi page that can be reached here: https://ko-fi.com/numericcitizen. It was created for the one dollars a month club initiative from Manuel Moreale. I’m one of his supporter.

Document writing and editing needs: Craft & Ulysses. Both apps are still at the center of my publishing needs. More than ever, I depend on Craft to gather my thoughts and notes, research, and write. Ultimately, content is exported into Ulysses for publishing to either Ghost, Micro.blog or, more recently, Medium.

Behind-the-scenes newcomers: Apple Freeform plays a more prominent role in helping me create diagrams. Freeform is joining Mindnote and Keynote for creating visual content when needed.

These are gone: All my domain name registrations are now entirely moved to Cloudflare, and gone is GoDaddy. Omnivore is being phased out by its developers; it’s gone, too.

Until next time

The continuous evolution of toolsets reflects the dynamic nature of technology and the diverse needs of users. No toolset is flawless, and each comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. This notion is evident in your evolving content creator workflow, where you adapt and integrate new tools, illustrating digital tools’ perpetual state of change. For 2025, I don’t expect too much change in my workflows. Don’t forget to visit my complete content creator toolset if you are curious about the individual tools that I’m using.

This document is also available as a Craft shared document.

For long-time readers and followers, they know that I own a few websites or publishing places, but a reminder is always welcomed. With so many places to publish to, you might wonder why not use only one big website. Well, I’m glad you asked. You’ll find most of the answers in the following diagram.

My (too) many publishing platforms

As you can see, each place fills a different role. Think of them as publishing channels. I prefer to have many focused places with content directed to a specific crowd over having a single channel full of seemingly unrelated posts. But there is more to it: I love using different tools and services. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and a specific set of features. That’s what drives me the most to use different publishing platforms.

Circumventing Ghost’s limited posts management capabilities.

List of publications in Ghost admin panel.

I recently decided to spend some time editing past articles published on my Numeric Citizen Space website. I first thought that by going to my Ghost admin page, I could quickly browse past published articles by month. I couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, Ghost offers limited post management capabilities, thanks to its limited content browsing capabilities. I cannot go back, say, list articles published early in 2023. I can sort by ascending or descending order, but from there, I have to scroll through a long, dynamically created list of posts. It’s not very effective for a website with 600-plus posts. I had to find a different option to locate a post for an update. This is where Ghost’s content APIs come into play.

The following API request doesn’t do the job (API key voluntarily removed!):

curl -H "Accept-Version: v5.0" "https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/api/content/posts/?key={APIkeygoeshere}&fields=title,url,published_at,updated_at&filter=published_at:>2024-01-01%2Bpublished_at:<2024-02-01" | json_pp

Let me explain what is this API request.

First, I’m going to the request using the macOS command line, hence the curl command. Next, the whole query follows in quotes. I query the content/posts API endpoint. Next, I pass my API key, followed by a field selection (&fields), and next with the filter using the published date between two dates. Finally, I pipe the results in the pretty JSON print macro (is this a macro?) so the output looks like this:

jfm@CraftingMAChine ~ % curl -H "Accept-Version: v5.0" "https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/api/content/posts/?key={API-key-goes-here}&fields=title,id,url,published_at,updated_at&filter=published_at:>2024-01-01%2Bpublished_at:<2024-02-01" | json_pp
	{
	   "meta" : {
	      "pagination" : {
	         "limit" : 15,
	         "next" : null,
	         "page" : 1,
	         "pages" : 1,
	         "prev" : null,
	         "total" : 9
	      }
	   },
	   "posts" : [
	      {
	         "id" : "65b6a09840566000015b0d37",
	         "published_at" : "2024-01-28T13:50:19.000-05:00",
	         "title" : "My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024/03",
	         "updated_at" : "2024-01-28T13:50:19.000-05:00",
	         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/my-weekly-creative-summary-for-the-week-of-2024-03/"
	      },
	      {
	         "id" : "65b6540640566000015b0cf7",
	         "published_at" : "2024-01-28T08:23:26.000-05:00",
	         "title" : "Special Message to Paying Subscribers",
	         "updated_at" : "2024-01-28T08:23:26.000-05:00",
	         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/special-message-to-paying-subscribers/"
	      },
	      {
	         "id" : "65b16e25bc7fde0001314ccb",
	         "published_at" : "2024-01-24T15:09:24.000-05:00",
	         "title" : "The Mac Turns 40",
	         "updated_at" : "2024-01-24T15:09:24.000-05:00",
	         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/the-mac-turns-40/"
	      },
	      {
	         "id" : "65ad35418532ae000169ddd2",
	         "published_at" : "2024-01-21T10:22:33.000-05:00",
	         "title" : "My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week 2024/02",
	         "updated_at" : "2024-01-21T10:22:33.000-05:00",
	         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/my-weekly-creative-summary-for-the-week-2024-02/"
	      },
	   ]
	}

Next, I copy the post ID of one article and paste it my browser for edition using this special URL:

https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/652e6eedb8a2650001ad9c5b

This URL brings me directly into the Ghost editor, provided that i was already authenticated with my account. That’s pretty much it. It could be much simpler. For this, I miss WordPress.

You can find the Ghost API document right here.

My-Creative-Workflow-2023-11.png

My creative workflow as of 2023-11. You can download an higher resolution here.

This 2023-11 version has a few changes and a cleaner and more focused workflow. Before going into specific details, I wanted to remind readers that I support the " POSSE " idea. You can read one post about it here. This workflow presented reflects this. As a reminder, here is one definition of the POSSE principle according to ChatGPT:

“POSSE” is an acronym that stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.” It’s a content publishing model that first encourages publishing content on your own website, and then syndicating (or sharing) that content on other platforms or websites. This approach is often recommended in digital marketing and personal branding strategies, as it allows individuals to maintain control over their original content while still benefiting from the audience and engagement found on larger, established platforms. The POSSE model is particularly relevant in the context of blogging, social media, and online content creation.

Welcome AI, welcome ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney

AI is making an official entry in my creative workflow. I wrote a long piece stating my guidelines for using AI in my creative work. You should read those and maybe get some inspiration out of them. The header image of this article was generated using Dall-E.

A new setup to share files easily

Dropshare coupled with Short.io enables me to share files like screenshots or other things. The setup was documented in detail in a previous article on this meta blog. Behind the scene, Dropshare is configured to use Backblaze to store files in a S3 bucket.

Bye bye to my Digital Garden

I came to the conclusion that a digital garden isn’t something for me. I decided to move some portions into my official about page. You can still access the remains of the garden, here.

A fun experience with Tinylytics

I’ve been using Plausible for my analytics needs but a cool guy (the same who’s also working with Manton Reece on Micro.blog hosting service, developed a lightweight version which I decided to support.

Safari-Personal (Default) — Sites tinylytics@2023-11-23@20.13.49@2x.png

The Tinylytics dashboard

Google Sheets is out too

I was using Google Sheets to save links to every post on Micro.blog via an IFTTT automation. I no longer feel the need to key this in place.

Brief

Brief is now part of my workflow because they also took over Mailbrew, both are forming a powerful content consumption enabler duo. Some of my Mailbrew newsletters contain Brief as a source for news, which is heavily using AI for summarization.

This article posted back in 2022, was a glimpse at a great moment of confusion. Following the publication of “Things That Don’t Stick With Me”, the next logical thing to do now is to talk about my seemingly permanent state of confusion with my choices of many digital tools.

In short, the problem is that, in many cases, I use different apps to do the same thing. The worst case to come to my mind is RSS feeds readers. After many years with News Explorer, I tried NetNewsWire, Reeder and Inoreader. Oh, I forgot about ReadKit too. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight because News Explorer is now out. After discovering and experimenting with Inoreader, I concluded that News Explorer no longer fit my needs. One of them being the text-highlighting capability. That is one less app to use or consider. NetNewsWire simplicity makes the app attractive. Reeder’s design is also attractive. I do use Inoreader with Inoreader web service. I’m not decided yet on the next steps: which one should I keep?

Twitter vs Tweetbot was another example. When I was on Twitter, I constantly switched between those two. The funny thing is that for those still on Twitter, third-party apps for Twitter are all dead. This would have fixed my issue! Now, with Mastodon, it’s worst because of the plethora of available apps. There are too many to list here and the list keeps expanding. Thankfully, I don’t use Mastodon much, but if I did, well, you know the drill by now, right?

On Micro.blog, same issue. I’m constantly moving between the original Micro.blog app and Gluon. Both are great but latter is a bit more complete.

Box and Dropbox used to be examples of my indecision before I went all in with iCloud Drive a few years ago. I still use Google’s Drive for storing Google’s Sheets updated via an IFTTT automation. That, I’m no longer sure about its usefulness.

Clipboard managers were another source of conflicting views. There were three apps in that space: Copied, Pastebot and Unclutter. I’ve settled on the latter because it is so much more than a clipboard manager. Yet, it took me way too long before deciding which one to keep. I don’t use a clipboard manager on the iPhone anymore.

Unclutter window on my Mac — Three Areas: the clipboard history, content of a folder and content of a specific text file.

• Here’s another one: Apple’s Notes, Notion or Craft. I use Craft 95% of the time, Notes 4% of the time, and Notion 1% for the rest. Oh, I forgot to mention Tot, a nifty tech editor! What is preventing me from settling on Craft for everything? I use Notion for storing information about a sideline project because Craft is not as good for that type of information.
• For my photo processing and retouching needs: Acorn 7, Pixelmator Pro, Photomator, Adobe Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic are installed somewhere on my devices. I should probably drop Adobe Suite, but It would be a mess to retrieve all my photos backed up to the Adobe Cloud. I’m being lazy here. I’m really enjoying Photomator on my iPad and iPhone. This application is better designed than Apple’s Photos for photo editing. Photomator is coming soon to the Mac, too, apparently, to make matters worst, I guess. I’m on the waiting list for a TestFlight invite.
• As a computer performance enthusiast, I use utilities like Sensei, iStats Menu, iStatistica Pro, and the open-source project “Stats” available on GitHub. I use iStats Menu on my Mac mini, Stats on my Mac Pro (used for my SDDCbox project) and iStatistica Pro on my MacBook Air. Sensei should probably be dropped.

Image.png

• Reddit, Apollo, Slide and Comet. There are all Reddit clients. They all offer nice and different things when consuming or interacting with Reddit content. For example, Slide comes with the best widgets, but is lacking active development and isn’t the best at browsing content. Comet isn’t been updated in two years. Apollo runs on Apple Silicon Macs but suffers from some display bugs.
• Password Managers, another story of indecision and laziness: 1Password and Apple’s Password Keychain. I should move from 1Password to Apple’s solution once and for all. Maybe if Apple had a discreet password manager? I’m undecided.
• Tasks managers represent another case of spreading myself all over the place. For personal to-dos, I depend on Apple’s Reminders. For my creative workflow, I depend on Things 3 but there was a time last year when I tried using Craft as a to-do manager. It didn’t go well, and I decided to bring back Things 3 in my workflow. I documented my change of heart in this video. One comforting thought, I know that I’m not alone in my quest for the best tools. This documented case with Things 3 and OmniFocus is a good example.

There is hope

I might sound like a tormented person, but I’m not. I would say that I’m not as focused as I should be. But there is hope because I do make decisions from time to time when things become clear or obvious. Let’s see a few examples.

• On the publishing platforms front, things are improving. Thankfully, this year, I’m focusing. There use to be WordPress, Micro.blog, Substack, Ghost, Blot and Write.as. WordPress is out. Substack is out. Blot is out. I’m down to two publishing platforms: Ghost and Micro.blog. That’s it. Sure, i cross-post some content to Mastodon, Bluesky and Flipboard. But that doesn’t count.
• On the photography side, at some point, there was 500px, Smugmug, Unsplash, Glass, Exposure. 500px is out. I decided to move out of Smugmug by the end of my subscription (next year), so that I can focus on Glass and Exposure.

Image.png

• I recently dropped Pocket, Matter and Readwise Reader. So, you see, there is hope!
• For bookmarking, at some point, I was using Apple’s Safari Reading List, Pocket, Craft bookmarks, Apple’s Quick Notes, and Mailbrew saved items. I dropped all of these in the last year to focus on Anybox. I couldn’t be happier. Oh, I sometimes use Micro.blog bookmarking feature to archive articles than I can highlight then create a linkpost using these highlights.
• Ever since I got my M1-based Mac mini, I bought a M1 MacBook Air. I constantly use both of them. One thing that I like to do is to use on app on one Mac and another competitive app on the other Mac. For example, on my MacBook Air, I use “Stats” and on my Mac mini, I use iStats Menu.
• iPad Pro vs MacBook Air: because reasons. I love both but in different usage scenarios. I’m fortunate enough to have both.
• My reading workflow was in a state of flux: https://numericcitizen.micro.blog/2022/05/07/my-reading-workflow.html. But, thanks to my decisions to drop traditional read-later services like Matter or Pocket, I’m more focused now in that area.

I should probably update this article occasionally because my digital toolkit is constantly evolving. You probably should keep an eye on my documented toolset that I keep up to date.

This article was previously published on Numeric Citizen Space:

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up My Mind About Digital Tools?

Time for another workflow update (the previous update can be found here). This update probably contains the most profound changes in a long time. My journey with WordPress as a CMS (content management platform) has ended. It started in 2015, after closing my indie developer blog hosted on Google’s Blogger. There are a lot of moving parts. The dust is starting to settle a bit now. Let’s dig in.

CleanShot-CleanShot@2023-03-26@20.05.48@2x.png

As for the diagram, I wanted to make it more focused on digital tools and how they relate to each other, so I removed the devices representation as well as icons of apps that are better documented in my toolset (see down below). I kept the essential making the foundation of my workflow.

Bye Bye WordPress.com

Following the completion of my migration from WordPress to Ghost, I think it’s the right time for an update to my content creator workflow. This WordPress migration forced a reconsideration of many tools that I use to create. This post will highlight most of these changes.

Bye bye Twitter

Up until a few months ago, Twitter was really at the center of my online presence. It’s no longer the case. It’s (nearly) nowhere to be seen (except for searches through Inoreader). With Twitter out from my digital landscape, the following are no longer needed.

• Birdbrain, an iPhone app that allowed me to track who was following or unfollowing me.
• Buffer, a scheduling service to post content on Twitter. It was used to repost past content to stimulate exposure and traction. If I consider the price of the service, I don’t think the return on investment was worth it.
• My @Apple_Observer Twitter account is in read-only mode. My @numericcitizen Twitter account is also in read-only mode but is used in conjunction with Inoreader for searching and scrapping Twitter for specific content using specific keywords.

Changing reading habits

My reading habits are evolving too. Reading is the fuel behind my creative activities.

• Speaking of Inoreader earlier, this content consumption service appeared on my radar and was later adopted. It is replacing News Explorer, an RSS reader. Inoreader allows for much more than reading RSS feeds. Reeder (read my review here) and ReadKit are two RSS readers that I use alternatively to consume my content on Inoreader simply because these two apps offer a native experience on the Mac that Inoreader currently doesn’t offer. I’m still undecided as to which of the two apps I’m going to keep. That’s for another content creator workflow update.
• Gone is Matter and Readwise Reader. Since I’m mostly reading content through RSS feeds, these two services are no longer needed. I keep Readwise highlights subscription, though. It serves as an archiving service of some sort. All text annotations by Inoreader are saved to Readwise.

A more focused publication channel

• Content publishing services were also reconsidered. Medium is out. Spending time there’s no longer viable as readership is stagnant at best. Tumblr is out too. I was cross-posting content there, but it is no longer viable too. Even if it was an automated process, thanks to Micro.blog cross-posting ability and to IFTTT, it doesn’t make sense to maintain Tumblr as this platform is a walking dead.
• Back to the WordPress migration, for obvious reasons, all my WordPress plugins, like Yoast, are no longer needed. Many others were dropped, too, saving me quite a lot on recurring expenses. Yoast was useful when writing a blog post to optimize SEO content but added some friction and probably didn’t make a big difference for my SEO optimization aspirations.

Is my Craft usage fading out?

• My Craft usage is still important, but a few use cases were dropped. I don’t use daily notes to manage my things to do (as explained in this video “Why I’m No Longer Using Craft Daily Notes”). I went back to Things 3 for this. The other use case that was removed from Craft is bookmarks management, as explained in detail in this video “Why I’m Moving My Bookmarks Out of Craft”. Now, I’m depending on the excellent Anybox bookmarks manager, as I explained in this article: “Anybox – My Experience with a Bookmarks Manager”. Switching to Anybox also means I dropped Raindrop.io too. Even as a free service, it was redundant to keep.

Finally, since my tool set is always changing, I created and shared a Craft document where you can have a complete view of the apps and services I depend on to create things and put them out there on the net. You’ll also see tools that are under consideration and the tools that I dropped in the past. Link: https://world.numericcitizen.io/meta-toolset.

Image.png

The time has come for the return of a more open web. I’m embracing this movement by joining platforms or services that are built on open standards and promoting the open web in general as a byproduct.

Write.as is an instantiation version of the WriteFreely writing platform, available as an open-source project. Think of WriteFreely as the open-source version of WordPress. Anyone can get the source and install their own instance.

In May 2022, I took advantage of five-year special pricing to subscribe to the Write.as platform. Without exactly knowing what would be my use case for it, I decided to support the platform, just like I’ve been supporting Micro.blog since 2018. After a while, I discovered the many facets of this writing ecosystem and found it to be a bit confusing. In this article, I explain all the parts of the open and dedicated blogging platform.

First, let’s see what ChatGPT says about Write.as.

Aaron Taylor is the founder & CEO of Cosmic.org and a team of remote employees who work on the Write.as and Remark.as platforms. He is passionate about creating secure, anonymous spaces where people can express themselves without judgement or censorship. He has worked to create tools and features that make anonymous publishing easier and more secure for users. He is also the creator of the Remark.as platform, which gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.

Write.as is a project of a small team led by the founder & CEO, Aaron Taylor, at Cosmic.org. They are a remote team based all over the world, from Portland to Berlin to Mexico City.

Write.as is a platform designed to help people express themselves freely and anonymously. It provides a space for everyone to post their thoughts without worry of judgement or censorship. All posts are public and open to comments, however, the identities of the posters can remain anonymous. The project offers a suite of applications and services to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and more secure for users. It also provides a way for people to follow topics, publications, or users, engaging in thoughtful dialogue and idea exchange.

Remark.as is a project that is a part of the Write.as platform. It is designed to help users to have conversations with each other in an anonymous, secure, and censorship-free environment. Remark.as has features like tagging topics and publications, creating polls, and engaging in private forums. It also gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts. Remark.as also provides users with the ability to create polls, surveys, and other interactive features to encourage public participation.

All in all, Write.as and Remark.as are projects by Aaron Taylor and the team at Cosmic.org that provide users with an anonymous, censorship-free space in which to express themselves freely and engage with others. They are both designed to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and to give users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.

Write.as is a simple, privacy-focused writing platform. It allows users to create and publish anonymous blog posts, journal entries, and other types of writing without the need for an account or personal information. The platform also includes a built-in editor and the ability to customize the appearance of your writing with different fonts and themes. Additionally, Write.as supports markdown formatting and has a feature called “focuses” which allows users to group related posts together. The platform is designed for those who value privacy and simplicity.

More seriously, here’s a brief description of each component, starting with an overview.

An Overview of the WriteFreely Ecosystem

The following diagram shows all the parts making up the Write.as service, which is part of the WriteFreely ecosystem.

write.as platform.png

• The Write.as service is where all the writing experience happens. Since this article isn’t a review, suffices it to say the editor offers a minimalistic and distraction-free environment. Write.as supports adding tags to any blog posts. Cross-posting content in Write.as is available for other platforms like Tumblr, Ghost and Twitter. I connected my account to Ghost but rarely cross-post over there. It’s nice to have, though.
• The writer can attach photos at the end of each post by dragging them on the bottom bar. Photos attachments go to the “snap.as” minimalistic photo sharing add-on, tied to Write.as. All photo attachments are shown in one place, on snap.as. Photo galleries are available, albeit with a one-time fee of 10$. Some features are marked as coming soon, but I suspect they are long in coming. I’m unsure if I would invest in this as I prefer dedicated services like Glass.
• Submit.as is another add-on to Write.as. As the name suggests, it is a way for an author to accept submissions from other writers. No registration is required from the submitter, helping a frictionless experience. This service is not cheap and comes with a 12$ per month minimal fee. It’s not cheap and I don’t know why. Again, integration with other platforms is marked as coming.
• Remark.as is yet another add-on closely tied to Write.as and offers to comment to any of the writer’s blog posts. Commenting is enabled on a per-post basis by adding a special <—discuss—> line anywhere within the post.
• Read.write.as is like a content feed coming from other writers. Content published on Write.as gets published on this feed. It comes from the hosted version of Write.as. According to this website, content is cross-posted to an RSS feed, Mastodon and Twitter, but I fear this has been abandoned as the content is somewhat old.
• The Mail add-on is where you’ll receive comments from other writers. Those comments are grouped in one place and are public.
• Café is a place for discussion, but frankly, I don’t know how posts get promoted there. Those discussions are conversations happening on the Read.write.as section.
• Other add-ons like a post signature is available for a monthly 10$ addition (ouch) and eBooks export is also available for another monthly 10$ (ouch).

Still with me? I know, it’s not simple. Write.as certainly feels like a bunch of add-ons taped together.

Image.png

Some remarks about the whole thing

• The Write.as experience is minimalistic and needs some polishing. I didn’t see improvements since I’m subscribing to the platform. This annoys me.
• Overall, the Write.as ecosystem feels minimalistic and unfinished. I don’t expect many improvements to come to the platform. Yet, Matt, the founder of Write.as, is active on discuss.write.as discussion forum, so it’s a good sign.
• There’s a Mac app for the Write.freely ecosystem, which should support Write.as but it has been in beta for more than a year. iOS and iPadOS are also available. All apps are available here. I didn’t test these, preferring the web experience.
• All these services are part of a suite called the Musing Studio. It’s more of a branding thing. The site hasn’t been updated for a while.

With this article, I hope I shed some light on this open-source project dedicated to writers and bloggers. Overall, I like Write.as, even with some rough edges or unfinished integration. If I failed to explain something correctly, let me know in the comments!

This article has been published on https://write.as/numericcitizen/ (here).

It’s been a while since I shared details about my blogger creator workflow. From now on, I’m renaming it to “my content creator workflow” as it better reflects the coverage of my work. As you might expect, a lot has changed in a year. Without further due, let’s begin.

• Cleanshot Cloud has been added to my toolset following an update to the Cleanshot application. I think it’s one of the best Mac utilities out there. I even wrote a love letter. The most recent update brings screenshots history which is really nice.

• Raindrop.io is making a small comeback using the free tier for storing non-text bookmarks like things to watch. I didn’t subscribe to the service, and I explain why in this blog post “When War in Ukraine Influences My Application Choices - Numeric Citizen Blog.” I rarely use it, but when needed, it’s there.

• Notion was dormant since I switched to Craft until recently when I started to use it more often in combination with IFTTT. I use it to store information like popular discussions about Craft on Reddit or YouTube videos that I liked. More details in this YouTube video that I made.

• I became a subscriber of write.as as explained in [this article](https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/friday-notes-63-i-writeas-myself/](https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/friday-notes-63-i-writeas-myself/). There was a promotion earlier this year for a five-year subscription plan. I decided to make the plunge and give it a try. I’m using Write.as mostly when I’m musing about a very specific subject. The war in Ukraine has been one of those subjects. I like Write.as for its simplicity and its connection to Ghost, albeit without using it for every post.

  My write.as page.

• Matter is becoming more of a nice read-later service. I like it a lot. But then, the long-awaited Readwise Reader is coming into beta and looks like a serious contender. In Early October, I was finally able to try the Readwise Reader application. I like it a lot too, but it offers a quite different experience than Matter. Which one will stick with me is still unclear, though, like many things as I wrote in [this article](numericcitizen.me/2022/07/0…](http://numericcitizen.me/2022/07/03/things-that-dont-stick-with-me/).

• The Reminders app from Apple is removed from my workflow, as I’m trying to focus on fewer tools. Instead, I came back to using Things 3 for my weekly planning instead of relying on Craft’s to-do list and daily notes. What’s better than a task manager to manage… tasks? More details about this change in this YouTube Video “Why I’m No Longer Using Craft for My Daily Notes.”

• Vimeo is out, but YouTube is in for hosting a series of videos about Craft. I could see myself creating videos about other subjects too in the future. At the time of publishing, I made 35 videos so far, I currently have a bit less than 500 subscribers. My goal is to hit the 1000 mark within the first year of producing videos.

• I settled on using a few Apple shortcuts for storing web clips in Craft Inbox. I discovered MarkDownload, a Safari extension for downloading web articles in markdown files that are easy to import in Craft for reading and processing. CraftClip 1.3 is also in there for use on my iPad when I’m browsing the web and want to save an article for further processing and inclusion in Craft. My reading workflow is still in flux, though. I’m thorn between Matter and Readwise Reader. As described in my YouTube video, Craft plays an important role too as explained in this YouTube video “My Reading Workflow Using Craft”

• I closed my Blot.im account and move to Craft for hosting the Numeric Citizen I/O website, representing a 60$ savings that will serve to pay for the Craft Business plan. What if Blot.im disappeared? I asked myself this question recently.

  • A side-effect of moving to Craft for hosting my content is the loss of RSS feed support.
  • Blot.im was based on a GIT repo and for publishing I needed Nova, it has been removed from my workflow too as well as WorkingCopy for the iPad.
  • Commento was disabled and closed on all my blogs after closing my Blot.im account (another 260$ of yearly savings) and when Ghost introduced native comments. I was never or very rarely used by visitors to post comments anyway. What a waste of time and money.