Some Good, Some Less Good

This will be a quick one, as I need to get back to packing for the trip. And writing, because of course a great idea for this screenwriting challenge hit me just as I was starting to pack my bags.

I got Ulysses set up to make blog posts yesterday. Today I shot out a test post. The Micro.blog site gave me no issues whatsoever. Posted like magic, just the way I wanted it, all from within Ulysses.

The WordPress site, however, was less successful. I spent a good part of the day tweaking settings and playing around with things, trying to get Ulysses to work with my self-hosted WordPress site. In the end, it just wasn’t going to work. I’m sure it can and will work, I just didn’t have enough time to keep playing with it today.

So I turned to the Jetpack app. WordPress (the company) pushes this app heavily, and I use it regularly to verify that posts have gone up. Well, turns out that it doesn’t like my self-hosted blog either. Everyone’s a critic! I spent more time than I wanted trying to get it to work, but it just wasn’t getting anywhere.

Where did that leave me? Well, I decided to go with my worst option. The web browser. I was able to get a post up, but man do I dislike the WordPress web editor. It’s just not great. I fought with it the entire way, and this was just to put up a silly little test post!

I started thinking about giving up on the WordPress mobile posting entirely. Then I remembered that I also have the older and less pushed WordPress app. Turns out, that was exactly what I needed. I was able to get my test post up with no issues.

So looks like I’ll be stuck with having to rely on two apps while traveling, at least for this trip. I’ll work on it more after I’m back home. But at least for now I have a way to get posts up without having to log onto a web editor. Because I really just don’t like them.

Tomorrow I’ll put these solutions to the true test. I’ll be traveling first thing in the morning, so the next post will be from the road. Hopefully.

Ulysses Without an Odyssey

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.