Rob Fahrni

Follow @fahrni on Micro.blog.

How I Post

I haven’t been asked how I manage my blog but I thought I’d share anyway. It is my blog after all, I can post whatever I want.

Tot

I use an app from Iconfactory called Tot on my iPhone and my Mac. I’m using it now from my iPhone, where I compose most of my posts.

I chose Tot because it’s darned simple. There are seven dots across the top of the screen, each represents a different document, they’re like tabs, each with a different color.

It also supports Markdown and plain text mode. I use plain text mode. It’s just nice to see raw Markdown, that’s a super power of Markdown, it’s just text.

Oh, the coolest thing about Tot is it saves your stuff to iCloud behind the scenes. No fuss, no muss. I love that.

Micro.blog

I use a nice, simple, blogging platform called Micro.blog. In the past I’ve used Blogger and WordPress. WordPress is particularly awesome, but I wanted a static site and I don’t need all the complexity of WordPress. It’s great though.

Anywho, once I’m happy with my post I copy it and paste it into the Micro.blog iOS app, Mac app, or the website and add any links I’d like to have. The Micro.blog iOS editor has some really nice Markdown shortcuts, like pasting links and it’s raw text as well.

Why all the compose, copy, paste, edit work? Well, Tot’s auto save is amazing and Micro.blog’s iOS app doesn’t have auto save. Yes, I’ve lost posts and I’m trying to prevent that.

After adding a category, or a few categories, to my post I publish it. Micro.blog creates pages, updates its timeline, and publishes to Twitter and Mastodon.

P.S. I started this post on a Saturday, got distracted, and I’m finishing it on Sunday morning. Nothing lost. Easy to pickup and go.