Writing annoyances
2024-01-12 10:14:00 +0700 by Mark Smith
As I attempt to write more blog posts I'm aware of various annoyances that get in the way. Here they are listed, hopefully I'll find a way to streamline.
Moving between folders - There's currently a seperate folder for each post type: blog, linkblog, podcast, newsletter and notes. That's partly historical. In the early days there was only the linkblog folder, then I added the blog, then podcast etc. It is a bit annoying having to jump between folders, especially on a small screen. I might make more sense in an interleaved world to have all the posts under the same calendar structure. The downside is it would likely becomes more difficult to find some posts. Currently blog posts are in year based calendar structure whereas links are in s day based calendar structure. In a combined world all the blog posts would be in a day calendar, so viewing all blog posts from 2024 for example would no longer be possible via the filesystem. That's actually very annoying, especially if you can't render a local copy of the website.
Linkblog links for blog posts - Each time I create a blog post I currently have to create both a blog item markdown file and an accompanying linkblog link markdown file. That's mostly because the latest page is set out in sections. If I don't add a linkblog link then folks are unlikely to see there was a blog post, since they are all the way at the bottom of the latest page. Creating the linkblog file is tedious because of the previously mentioned jumping between folders problem. A combined folder structure would make this easier, but also linkblog links might not be necessary in an interleaved everything main page paradigm.
Creating files with frontmatter - Creating the markdown files is really tedious at the minute. Both the filename which had quite a long format containing the date and time. Blog posts also have the title converted to snake case and used in the filename. What makes it annoying is you often don't know the title when you start writting the post, so you have to go back and update the file name afterwards. Also creating the frontmatter is annoying because you have to ensure you have the right date and time which also has to be in the filename. I would be great to have a way to make this easier. Long term it should probably be a custom UI, but it would be useful to have the bare bones method of creating files by hand streamlined as much as possible. You always want to be able to fall back easily to just creating a file in a text editor.
These are the main annoyances at the minute. I'll add more below if I think of / discover any more. #