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.

This article is about how I’m using Craft and Things 3, which is behind any short or long article I share online. Here is what happens when I get a new post idea.

1. In Things 3, Create an entry and set priority and desired or expected date of publication if known.
2. In Craft, I create a new document, set the title and then copy the document’s deeplink to the clipboard.
3. Still within Craft, I move the newly created document to the appropriate folder.
4. Still within Craft, I update my private creator dashboard document optionally.
5. Back to Things 3, and I paste the deeplink into the note field. It’s handy to jump from Things 3 to Craft with a single tap.

At this point, I can start my research, writing and editing of my article or blog post in Craft. Now, here is what happens after publishing my article:

1. Mark the to-do item as done in Things 3.
2. I update my private creator dashboard document by converting my deeplink to a new permalink that I put in the Recently Published section.
3. I monitor the appropriate RSS feed for quality control. See this article about subscribing to my own RSS feeds.

There you have it. Craft plays a central role in my blogger workflow¹. This blog post exposes what happens at the beginning and at the end of a new post idea. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something.

This article is about how I’m using Craft and Things 3, which is behind any short or long article I share online. Here is what happens when I get a new post idea.

1. In Things 3, Create an entry and set priority and desired or expected date of publication if known.
2. In Craft, I create a new document, set the title and then copy the document’s deeplink to the clipboard.
3. Still within Craft, I move the newly created document in the appropriate folder.
4. Still within Craft, I optionally update my private creator dashboard document.
5. Back to Things 3 and I paste the deeplink in the note field. It’s handy to jump from Things 3 to Craft with a single tap.

At this point, I can start my research, writing and editing of my article or blog post in Craft. Now, here is what happens after publishing my article:

1. Mark the to-do item as done in Things 3.
2. I update my private creator dashboard document by converting my deeplink to a new a permalink that I put in the Recently Published section.
3. I monitor the appropriate RSS feed for quality control. See this article about subscribing to my own RSS feeds.

There you have it. Craft plays a central role in My Blogger Workflow. This blog post exposes what happens at the beginning and at the end of a new post idea. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something.

I recently got a few comments and questions from some followers on Micro.blog about my use of Scribbles versus Micro.blog blog hosting services. One guy couldn’t figure out why I was using Scribbles to write very short posts using a one-word title while I was using Micro.blog for longer posts, most of them without a title. I replied with a short answer, but I think I should elaborate for those who have been following me for some time or for those who just got here.

Numeric Citizen Digital Space Tip Sheet 2024-01-Hires.png

I use three distinct sites for posting written content. My main website (https://numericcitizen.me ), which came first, is currently hosted on Ghost. Next is my Micro.blog site (https://blog.numericcitizen.me), and, more recently, I added another small website hosted on Scribbles https://blips.numericcitizen.me. Let me explain each site’s purposes.

My main website is for posting longer articles like tech reviews (like “Five tools for efficient bloggers”) or for sharing long takes on a specific subject (like: “Five Steps for leaving Twitter”). My publication velocity is about one article per week. This is where my weekly creative summary newsletter gets published, thanks to Ghost’s built-in newsletter capabilities.

My second website is my daily blog, called “my blog,” and is where I post comments and thoughts about Apple, tech, photography, apps and services, and many other things. My blogging site is part of Micro.blog, there is a small community around it, thanks to Micro.blog fediverse support. Somehow, Micro.blog replaced Twitter for me, more than my presence on Mastodon did. I usually post around 10-20 weekly posts on Micro.blog. I like this place a lot for so many reasons.

I recently started using Scribbles, a small blog hosting service I like and want to support. I’m using this service to post short thoughts using a single-word title. These posts are then cross-posted to my Micro.blog timeline with a link going back to my Scribbles site. You can see an example of such a post appearing on my Micro.blog timeline in the following screenshot. Each post sports two emojis to help me spot them in my timeline. One thing I try to do is not to be too clickbait with my single-word title. The chosen word must be evocative or related to the post content.

Image.png

The post on Scribbles gets cross-posted on my Micro.blog timeline by using one of the coolest features of Micro.blog: cross-posting of content coming from RSS feeds. This is shown in the following screenshot.

Image.png

Micro.blog picks up posts from the Scribbles website RSS feed and will post content on my timeline, as well as cross-post it to Mastodon and Bluesky. This is POSSE in action. I’m a believer.

When I first thought about writing this article, I wasn’t sure where it would end up being shared. However, as the article grew in length and covered my blogging habits, it became obvious that it would go on my meta website, which is another one of my websites. There you have it.

I recently got a few comments and questions from some followers on Micro.blog about my use of Scribbles versus Micro.blog blog hosting services. One guy couldn’t figure out why I was using Scribbles to write very short posts using a one-word title while I was using Micro.blog for longer posts, most of them without a title. I replied with a short answer, but I think I should elaborate for those who have been following me for some time or for those who just got here.

Numeric Citizen Digital Space Tip Sheet 2024-01-Hires.png

I use three distinct sites for posting written content. My main website (https://numericcitizen.me ), which came first, is currently hosted on Ghost. Next is my Micro.blog site (https://blog.numericcitizen.me) and, more recently, I added another small website hosted on Scribbles https://blips.numericcitizen.me. Let me explain each site’s purposes.

My main website is for posting longer articles like tech reviews (like “Five tools for efficient bloggers”) or for sharing long takes on a specific subject (like: “Five Steps for leaving Twitter”). My publication velocity is about one article per week. This is where my weekly creative summary newsletter gets published, thanks to Ghost’s builtin newsletter capabilities.

My second website is my daily blog, called “my blog,” and is where I post comments and thoughts about Apple, tech, photography, apps and services, and many other things. My blogging site is part of Micro.blog, there is a small community around it, thanks to Micro.blog fediverse support. Somehow, Micro.blog replaced Twitter for me, more than my presence on Mastodon did. I usually post around 10-20 weekly posts on Micro.blog. I like this place a lot for so many reasons.

I recently started using Scribbles, a small blog hosting service I like and want to support. I’m using this service to post short thoughts using a single-word title. These posts are then cross-posted to my Micro.blog timeline with a link going back to my Scribbles site. You can see an example of such a post appearing on my Micro.blog timeline in the following screenshot. Each post sports two emojis to help me spot them in my timeline. One thing I try to do is not to be too clickbait with my single-word title. The chosen word must be evocative or related to the post content.

Image.png

The post on Scribbles gets cross-posted on my Micro.blog timeline by using one of the coolest features of Micro.blog: cross-posting of content coming from RSS feeds. This is shown in the following screenshot.

Image.png

Micro.blog picks up posts from the Scribbles website RSS feed and will post content on my timeline, as well as cross-post it to Mastodon and Bluesky. This is POSSE in action. I’m a believer.

When I first thought about writing this article, I wasn’t sure where it would end up being shared. However, as the article grew in length and covered my blogging habits, it became obvious that it would go on my meta website, which is another one of my websites. There you have it.

Have you ever searched the web for an article where you couldn’t see when it was published? It happens to me quite often. I don’t understand why such important information isn’t communicated to the readers.

In a fast-moving numeric world, the publishing date helps the reader gauge the content’s relevancy. I set the publication date on all my websites because it adds context to the content. When I created Numeric Citizen I/O, I used a post slug format that includes the publication date. The path to the webpage is shown in search results, which makes searching the web a more useful experience. Below are examples of URLs to my websites.

https://numericcitizen.micro.blog/2021/03/07/about-those-webp.html

https://numericcitizen.me/2021/02/27/porting-office-work-a-bad-idea/

Update 2022-11-15: Sadly, since moving to a Craft-based hosting solution, the URL can no longer include the publication date. If you are a business plan subscriber, the workaround is to set the document as a separate website individually.

Update 2024-03-15: I realized that when I moved from WordPress to Ghost, I lost this notion of date in the URL. All previous content is still accessible using the old URL format, but newly published content no longer contains the publication date in the article’s URL. We cannot have it all, I guess.

This article was first published on 2021-03-17.

I decided to disable cross-posting from my Glass feed to Bluesky and Pixelfed. This should fix the photo duplicates on your Micro.blog timeline each time I post a new image on Glass. Sorry for the inconvenience. The problem was simple: Let’s say I share an image on Glass, Micro.blog picks it up and cross post to Bluesky and Pixelfed. Micro.blog then detects a new photo from my Pixelfed feed and cross posts that to my Micro.blog timeline for the second time. Hence the duplicate.