How (or why) the heck do I (Indie)blog? pratik.micro.blog
@pratik I personally use iAWriter or MarsEdit if I’m writing a longer post and Micro.blog directly for a quick post (and 99.9% of mobile posting). I’m not quite sure why that wouldn’t work or wasn’t an option for you if iA Writer + blot would work?
@pratik the jankiness of the run your own IndieWeb/mechanisms for exposing a posting API that actually works with apps in any static site generator is like 80% of the Micro.blog value as a hosting service IMO.
@jsonbecker @pratik I would second iAWriter too. I use Ulysses for the moment, but I'm probably going to move blogging over to iA now that the folder hierarchy has been improved
@jsonbecker @matthewcowen I haven't used iAWriter in a long time, but I am a long-time user and love their aesthetics, so I might look at it again. I'm fine with Micro.blog as a blogging host, but I do not like its posting or timeline UI/UX. I've rekindled my intention of storing notes in text files (.md), so I can ignore Obsidian and other apps as long as I can get a regular export of .md files of my posts. Hence this request on the Help Forum.
@pratik right, but my point is, iAWriter has direct/built-in support for posting to MB so I think if you’re looking for a folder of markdown to MB, I think that’s a far easier path than Obsidian plus Shortcuts or scripts or other things.
@pratik Yeah that makes sense. iA will let you have .md files wherever you want as long as you add folders to the library (it's a pointer 😉).
I use Ulysses as it can 'update' posts, but it has been flaky since Safari profiles, it seems to not get along with them completely and craps out.
@jsonbecker Yup. I forgot about iA Writer's connection to Micro.blog. Let me try that out. That way, I also get my .md files for Obsidian. I would love to use MarsEdit for micro-posts, but then need to back up text files regularly (weekly/monthly). Does MarsEdit store them somewhere?
@matthewcowen updating posts is nice but I rarely go back to my original editor and instead do it directly in Micro.blog/MarsEdit.
@pratik I’m pretty sure that MarsEdit stores posts in a sqlite database. I’m not home, and I forgot to restart Tailscale before leaving to remote in. @danielpunkass could answer though. If it’s in sqlite, you can probably write a simple SQL script to extract it from there… but that’s not really the use of MarsEdit. (However, that’s why I don’t care about having all my posts in Markdown locally at all times. My host supports getting that if need be, but I have a searchable, editable, locally backed up copy of my blog anyway via MarsEdit).
MarsEdit stores posts in a sqlite database. I’m not home, and I forgot to restart Tailscale before leaving to remote in. @danielpunkass could answer though. If it’s in sqlite, you can probably write a simple SQL script.
@pratik @jsonbecker Open Mars Edit then hold down the Option key while opening the Help menu to reveal Open MarsEdit Data Folder. In that folder, under Backups, are separate .txt files with the contents of your posts.
@Miraz @jsonbecker Thanks. That's good to know. However, when I sort by "date created", the order isn't right. Maybe that's not the purpose of the app but if you could select posts and have them "export as .txt" files, that would be great.
@pratik @jsonbecker I've used AppleScript before now to grab title, link, date published and body text of a selected post. I've also used KeyboardMaestro (because my AppleScript skills are inadequate) to work through [x] selected posts and grab the info I've wanted. About to go on a call but could provide more info if you want it.
@jsonbecker Usually for the micro posts, both dates should be the same.
@miraz Would love to know more. Can DM over Mastodon if we don’t want to flood our mutuals timeline
@pratik Getting scolded when asking for help would be a new and unwelcome experience for me. I'm sorry for anyone who has had that experience. It seems so antithetical to the spirit of this place.
@pratik not if you didn’t create the post in MarsEdit and the file is locally created post-sync, then it’ll be set for the sync time.
@pratik you can almost set your clock - certainly your calendar on ‘the problem with indie we posts and when will someone make it friendly to the other 99.9% ..
Adding blot to your needs - and I think means moving off microblog?
@pratik 👍 That'll just do a single post. Working through a selection of posts is where I turn to Keyboard Maestro.
@Miraz Just selecting a post doesn't do the trick. You have to open the post. Then, it works perfectly. Can you set up an "action" in Keyboard Maestro to open a post, export it, close it, open another post, and repeat X times?
Maybe tomorrow, I'll finally once again look into Keyboard Maestro. I can get BetterTouchTool via SetApp, and it looks similar.
@pratik Just selecting a post worked repeatedly in my tests as I did the script. When I used an earlier version of this script in the past posts did not need to be opened.
@pratik I use TOT (for a while exclusively), Drafts and iA Writer for writing posts. When writing in TOT I publish to Micro.blog via a Shortcut which at the end saves the text as a text file. Similarly with Drafts, the action I use saves the text as a text file in the same location as the TOT shortcut. If at a later date I wish to access the post to edit it, read it, etc, I can do so via iA Writer.
@pratik what was you issue with Micro.blog again? Because isn’t that the simple solution you crave? Write in Drafts or iaWriter for safekeeping your posts and then publish to Micro.blog, which takes care of all the publishing and cross-posting and running your blog.
@AlexKucera No problems with Micro.blog per se. I'm happy with its hosting and offerings. I'm just being finicky about backing up my posts as text files. Micro.blog has excellent backup options too but I hope it lets us customize the backup because right now, it takes me 40 minutes since it exports everything including images. I guess if I do it once a month, it should be fine. I wanted to do it more often.
@Miraz You were right. Using your code for the first half, the selecting a post worked. It got a little complicated when I tried to save the clipboard contents to a .md file in a specific folder especially in parsing the date format for file name. Thankfully, ChatGPT came to the rescue.
Sharing the full script here. You need a folder named 'Export' on your desktop. You can change the location if you wish.
Now to figure out the Keyboard Maestro part to automate it for multiple posts.
@pratik I see. But isn’t the backup part easily handled in the writing environment? Although I guess it is less ideal then having a backup of your actual blog.
@pratik I was doing a routine where I wanted to gather Title and Link from each post since my previous newsletter. I would first select relevant posts in ME and see how many. Then I would select the oldest of those posts (ME is sorted by Pub Date). Then I'd run the following KM action. The AppleScript would add each Title / Link pair to a clipboard and then later I'd paste the output to BBEdit. A bit different from what you want to achieve but shows the Repeat [x] times, do script, Pause (always crucial), then Up Arrow.
@pratik Hmmm, previous reply was cut off. KM macro:
Repeat Actions 5 Times
* Execute AppleScript
* Append Variable “theText” with Text “%SystemClipboard% ”
* Pause for 0.5 Seconds
* Type the Up Arrow Keystroke
@jsonbecker BTW rechecked MarsEdit's backup folder as @miraz suggested. It only stores longform posts and not the posts created via the micropost shortcut. BTW, now I can haz nifty AppleScript that does exactly what I wanted with a selected MarsEdit post. A couple of inconsistencies (the first line of a title-less post was duplicated as a title, and emojis & special characters came out messed up) made me spend more time on it than I expected, but now all fixed 🙌🏽