From idea to a draft ready to publish in a minute

In January I wrote about why I was building my own blogging system instead of using one that already exists. I wanted to own the site and the readership, to link posts written in different languages, and to let people comment without registering first. Then I posted nothing for months.

The software was not the problem. The problem was everything I had to do before writing. Making a post meant opening the admin application and finding or making a header image, and I had to get through both of those before I could write the first sentence. That was enough to stop me most evenings.

So a few weeks ago I stopped adding features and made it possible to write by talking to the system instead. I describe the post I want, or hand over an old note or an unfinished idea, and about a minute later there is a draft waiting for me with a header image already made. Nothing is published at that point. I read, edit and publish it myself when it is ready.

Two things had to be true before that was worthwhile.

The first is that it has to sound like me. The assistant reads previous blog posts, keeps a description of how I write and then writes new drafts following that description. It is not automatic and it is not perfect. The first draft still uses words and expressions I wouldn't use, and I have had to correct the description several times. What I get back is a first draft, not a post.

The second is that the blog has to look like the site it is part of. The posts take their fonts, colours and layout from the website around them, so a blog reads as part of the company site rather than as something bolted onto the side of it. My personal site and this one run on the same system and look nothing like each other.

There were false starts. I built a way for the blog to control the links on the page before I understood that it should be the other way around, and the website should control them. Removing my version made every click faster, because the page no longer reloaded completely each time. For several weeks, any link to a post shared on Facebook or Slack showed no picture, because too much styling sat above the picture tag in the page and neither site reads that far down. Post pages are about a tenth of the size now, they show their picture when shared, and they open straight away on a phone. The like button counted clicks that were never saved anywhere.

It works well now. Two sites use it, and a tourism site for a local town is in progress. Since the beginning I wanted to design this a a set of plugins that could be used to add a blog to an existing website. This is still a gaol that I haven't reached but I'm making good progress towards it.

I would like other people to use this. It is not a one-click installation yet. Each site needs some configuration and a tenant of its own setting up, which for now I do by hand. If that sounds useful for your site, leave a comment below, send me an email, or message me on LinkedIn and I will help you get it running.