DEV Community

Cover image for How I Write Blog Posts These Days

How I Write Blog Posts These Days

David Wickes on April 02, 2019

I read How I Write Online Articles John Papa for Microsoft Azure ・ Apr 1 '19 ...
Collapse
 
learnbyexample profile image
Sundeep •

yay, most of it is similar to my workflow :)

I tried so-simple for GitHub pages, and I am more than okay with it so far

I need to change a few things for front matter (been lazy enough to not automate, maybe someday) between GitHub pages and Dev.to, and I always use preview as sanity check - like have I forgotten some change, rendering (found two bugs so far), etc

will check out style and diction, feels like it will be helpful

Collapse
 
grahamlyons profile image
Graham Lyons •

I have a similar workflow. I use Vim almost exclusively but I do switch to VS Code for the Markdown preview - I didn't realise there was no standard for it though.

I often use the spell checking in Vim: :set spell! to toggle on/off. I often have to :h spell to remember all the commands but z= on a word brings up a list of suggestions and ]s moves to the next bad word.

I have written my own site a few times but switched to Jekyll a year or two ago because the less of my own code hanging around doing stuff the better and any features I want are just a Gem away.

Collapse
 
gypsydave5 profile image
David Wickes •

I have written my own site a few times but switched to Jekyll a year or two ago

This made me laugh as I switched from Jekyll to writing my own site a year or two ago. I think it was the Liquid tags that did it - found the syntax confusing and occasionally magical.

TBH I still think I could do it all with Pandoc and a few scripts, but I CBA to work it out right now.

I often have to :h spell

Always.

Collapse
 
aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel •

This is awesome -- I am installing style and diction right now -- what a cool tool

Collapse
 
grahamlyons profile image
Graham Lyons •

Yeah, I'd never heard of those before but I'll definitely try them out.

Collapse
 
gypsydave5 profile image
David Wickes •

Glad you like it Ali!

Collapse
 
micahriggan profile image
Micah Riggan •

Very cool! I'm also blogging with vim + github. Made an MR on your githubs for some links on your main readme that weren't working for me

I've been trying out 100% markdown with the github static pages and then copy and pasting to dev.to.

Could you say more about what :%y+ does?

I've been :!pbcopy on my mac to copy out, but I have a feeling your thing does that too, without clearing all the text?

Collapse
 
gypsydave5 profile image
David Wickes •

Could you say more about what :%y+ does?

SURE!

  • : - start command mode
  • % - with the whole buffer...
  • y - yank it to...
  • + - the register called +.

The register + is the system clipboard.

Collapse
 
micahriggan profile image
Micah Riggan •

Thanks for the explanation! Registers are on of the vim things I haven't fully incorporated into my workflow

Collapse
 
nestedsoftware profile image
Nested Software •

@mortoray I see that there are several people who may want to use your mdl thing!

Collapse
 
mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y •

I'm working on it. It's almost far enough to do all my posts -- exception the latex bits.

Collapse
 
gypsydave5 profile image
David Wickes •

Will now have to read your posts about writing a Markdown parser - thanks!

Collapse
 
siddharthshyniben profile image
Siddharth •

I'm thinking of doing something similar, but my only question is: How do you manage drafts? Do you push them to GitHub or do something else?