Category: blogging software

Ulysses Without an Odyssey

~ Ryan

I have a love/hate relationship with software. I find that when I come across a new problem/challenge, I go looking for new software to help me fix/overcome it. I know I should see if the tools I already have are up to the job, but who doesn’t like a new shiny fresh install? But then I end up spending all my time playing around with the new software, rather than actually fixing/overcoming the problem/challenge that brought me there in the first place. It’s a terribly vicious cycle. And I fall for it every time.

Well, almost every time.

Today I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t install anything new in my quest for a one-stop mobile blogging setup. So instead I turned to the list of apps I’d written up yesterday and decided I’d go through every one of them before I’d consider looking for something new to accomplish this task.

My first stop was, of course, Ulysses. And thankfully my journey was nothing like its namesake. Have I mentioned how great Ulysses is? Because, really, it’s awesome. Every time I dig into it, I find new ways to use it and capabilities I had no idea existed within.

The goal was to be able to draft, edit, tag, title, and post to two different blogs on two different platforms. With bonus points for handling images, and a double bonus for syncing with previously published posts. Ulysses got full marks on all but the syncing previously published posts, but even there it’s going to get half credit. It doesn’t pull old posts written elsewhere, but it does retain posts written in Ulysses, and it allows you to edit those posts and update them whenever needed. And that’s pretty awesome.

Ulysses looks like it will meet all my needs. I spent the day reading through the helpful guides that are available on the website. I was able to set it up to publish to my Micro.blog instance with no problem. I ran into a couple issues while attempting to get the WordPress publishing option to work, but that was because of my setup, not their software.

I expected this hiccup, though. For the Micro.blog site, that’s hosted through Micro.blog proper (also awesome). The setup for publishing through Ulysses went painlessly. For my WordPress site, however, I knew there would likely be a bump or two in the road. I self-host my WordPress site, and it has always given me issues in the past whenever I try to incorporate something that was likely designed with the commercially hosted WordPress in mind. But experience being an excellent teacher and all, I knew what issues I’d expected to encounter and was able to resolve them in little time. Once again, Ulysses for the win!

Of course, I haven’t tested any of it yet. And so that will be the next big goal. I’ll give it a dry run tomorrow, so expect some test posts to appear and go away. If all goes well, this will be my mobile solution. I should have known it would be Ulysses all along.

Preparing to Embark

~ Ryan

It’s looking like I’ll be working on two projects this week. The big one will be to write the screenplay for the screenwriting challenge I wrote about all last week. While this will eat up a good portion of my time and energy this week, it’ll likely not be something I’ll be mentioning too much here, aside from maybe a little progress update or something.

The other project I’ll be working on this week, though, is one I’ll be doing in the open. This week I’ll be working on coming up with a system to blog from the road.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a huge fan of MarsEdit. The one major drawback of it, though, is that there is no mobile version. It resides solely on my laptop, which I don’t plan on bringing with me on our family vacation at the end of the week.

This leaves me with a challenge. I need to find a comparable way to write, edit, and publish these posts while I’m traveling. I know this should be easy. But I tend to overcomplicate, especially when it comes to writing interfaces and software in general. I know that I don’t want to have to rely on multiple apps to get the job done. What I want is one place where I can type up some words, maybe even include a photo or two from the road, and post without leaving the app.

So that will be my other big goal this week. Come up with a solution that works for me to write and publish posts while mobile. Fingers crossed I find something that works!