Hi steemians. In this post I'll explain you my personal workflow for a better and more efficient writing and publishing experience on steemit.com.
Steemit is a great publishing platform with a really disruptive approach with its content and curation rewarding system. However I've found that Steemit does not provide a good interface to write and publish directly from the website. But don't worry, steemit.com is still in beta and in this post will reveal you my personal solution for an improved writing and publishing workflow on steemit.
Why I'm not happy with the Steemit editor ?
The visual preview of your post is located below the text input zone meaning that you always have to scroll down and up to check the preview.
You don't have any possibility to save a post as a draft (which might be helpful in case you want to come back later to your writing work) or do versioning of your text (which can be very frustrating in case you want to revert back to a previous better version of your text)
So, how to make things better ?
1. Learn Markdown writing syntax
First of all, you should know that you can write your posts in markdown. Markdown is a syntax that makes writing for the web really easier and quicker. No need for html tags, etc. Markdown is easy to learn (you don't need to be a programmer) and makes you focus on the content instead of loosing time and energy on text formatting. I really encourage you to change your old habits and give it a try. After a few days, you won't be able to write any post without using markdown.
2. Write your post in markdown using a good text editor
Now that you know how to write markdown text, it's time to write your first markdown enabled post !
What you will need is a good text editor (No ! Not MS Word). What you will need is a plain text editor like those used by programmers. I recommend you Atom which is opensource and heavily supported by a large community. Download it and install it according to the documentation provided on their website.
Simply open Atom, choose create a new document and save it with mith the .md extension. For example : myFirstMarkdownPost.md.
Write your first lign of markdown text :
# my first line of mardown enabled text
Now, simply use this keyboard combination : ctrl + shift + m. Atom will open a new tab with a preview of you rendered markdown text! Cool no ? For a better experience, you can enable a side by side view between your code and the preview. To do this, right click on the preview tab and choose split right.
Notes :
- If you are on the go, you can also simply use an online markdown editor like dillinger
- If you need to write on on a mobile phone, you can find a lot of markdown editors apps. Simply have a look in your favorite app marketplace.
3. Enable versioning of your text
This is a little bit more tricky. If you know what git is, simply use git. If you don't know at all what git is, simply save your various versions under different names. How to use git is out of the scope of this post but in the next future, I'll explain you how to use it.
4. Okay, and what about images ?
You ucertainly want to add some pictures to your post. Markdown of course allows it too. What you will need is an image hosting service. I use postimage.io because the site is really fast and automatically provides you a button to quickly copy the markdown code to insert your uploaded picture in your markdown text.
Once your image is uploaded simply copy the markdown code (the second kind of markdown code) using the copy button located on the right of the code line. Back to your text editor, simply paste it where you want your image to appear.
tip : If you are looking for a good tool to quickly edit pictures with filters, text and overlays, I recommend you canva, an online image editor.
5. Publish !
Now that you are happy with the preview of your post, simply copy the markdown text, go to steemit.com > submit a story and paste your code in the editor. Normally, the rendered text should look the same as in the preview of your text editor.
Find a good and appealing title and submit your post !
Conclusion
You are now an efficient steemit blogger and will soon become a markdown master. Publishing on steemit has never been so easy !