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Eight steps to blog posting

Now the blog has reached 10 posts I have been through enough cycles to have a blog post creation process sort of worked out.

Step 1 - 1st draft text

The initial drafts are written into OneNote, as that is the application that I use to organise most things. I could just as easily use word processing software (Word, Google Docs, etc.) or even any old text editor, as formatting isn't crucial at this point. The aim of the game is to get the words onto paper (equivalent) and not worry about what it looks like. Any hyperlinks are put inside square brackets in the text so they can be copied and pasted into place in the second draft.

Step 2 - 1st draft graphics

Most posts seem to be coming along with images, and this is unlikely to change unless I suddenly discover a literary bent (and am simultaneously and miraculously blessed with some ability to write fancy like).

At the moment the graphics are a mix of photographs and screen grabs. The aim is to source the correct images for the post without worrying about exactly what they look like, this stops me wasting on time on images that I later discard during editing as not required. Often they are not pasted into the OneNote draft and just referenced within placeholders containing their filenames. I tend to capture screen grabs into OneNote at the same time as writing the accompanying text.

Step 3 - 2nd draft text

At this point I create a post in Blogger and copy and paste the text into the Blogger editor window. The second draft could be made in OneNote, but as the formatting will not be the same it doesn't seem helpful to do that. The Blogger post editor allows the draft to be altered in a WYSIWYG mode. The process is to go through the text and make sure it is readable and more importantly accurate (factually & grammatically correct, clear and logical, no missing references, etc.). All the required hyperlinks (had to really) are added at this point.

Step 4 - 2nd draft graphics

The next stage is to prep the graphics. I am using the simplest tools available, basically whatever came with Windows 10; Microsoft Photos to view and crop images to size/shape and Windows Paint 3D to add any highlight detail or make any redactions. I haven't considered yet which file formats are best for which purpose, just using the default outputs from each program.

Step 5 - Final draft

The post is now complete apart from minor modifications, although they may be to text or graphics. The review process is iterative; usually by starting reading the post preview from the title, making a modification, generating a new preview, and going back to the start to read/check from the top again, until I am happy with the post.

Step 6 - HTML clean-up

The Blogger WYSIWYG editor sometimes creates some strange-looking HTML code chunks that can be removed without any effect on the look of the post. I don't go overboard on this but will strip out long pieces of redundant code. Also the WYSIWYG editor occasionally can't provide the correct formatting and I have had to go into the HTML code to try and get what I wanted back out. Unfortunately my HTML coding skills are pretty rusty and this is not always successful.

For example looking at the HMTL for the first sentence of Step 1

<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he initial drafts <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">are written</span> into <a href="http://www.onenote.com/">OneNote</a>, just because that is the application that I use to organise most things.

The text is unnecessarily split up into several blocks of text for no obvious reason.

Removing them to get to this,

<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The initial drafts are written into <a href="http://www.onenote.com/">OneNote</a>, just because that is the application that I use to organise most things.

makes no difference to the output.

Step 7 - Post

With the post blog-ready I leave it for 24 hours, then go back for a final re-read and make any final tweaks. After which it's just a matter of hitting the Publish button and it is away.

Step 8 - Archiving

Once the post is finalised I copy the whole thing from the blog back into OneNote, as the text has usually diverged a fair amount from the 1st draft due to the large number of edits. I then append any reference material, post outline or links to material that was used to create the post but not included in it, to the post's OneNote page and add the date published and post number to the title.


One final thing to point out is that none of the steps are set in stone. Neither is the process, the archiving step could and should be better, as could my use of graphics. But for now it works.

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