Posted on 11th February 2025
Exploring solutions for writing and publishing blog content
This blog post is something of a test. In my last post I outlined the simple flat-file CMS I am using, how I was generally pleased with it and some ideas I had on improvements I could make to the overall process of writing and publishing my posts.
To that end this post is being written on my phone and will be published directly from it. Still no sandbox yet for drafting posts, nor integrated spell-check so sorry if you spot some work in progress or mistakes while I'm working on it.
I'm using a WebDAV implementation on the server side that it seems is bundled with my cPanel web hosting account. It's called 'web disk' and setting it up is a breeze.
Finding a good client app for my phone was another matter. On Windows and I assume other non-mobile OSes you can simply map a drive and see and edit the files directly. Android and iOS don't come with OS level WebDAV support. There are apps which sync data to / from WebDAV. But I don't want the complexity of an offline solution just yet, mainly because I don't trust most of these syncing apps not to share my data or mess up live content. Which means really I needed one single app that will 'do it all': connect, display the files and edit them directly.
Currently I'm trialling an app called 'Cx File Explorer'. It has a reasonably intuitive interface and a basic text editor built in.
Let's see how it goes. Going down this route definitely feels like progress, leaving me wondering if perhaps we have overcomplicated content management on the web for some time.
Update: I'm writing this section from Windows, using Notepad++
With more time to think about this there is a wishlist of things I'd like to improve the process:
- Spell-checking (ideally in the text editors used - the Android app doesn't have this)
- Display options - customising the font and colours would be a nice touch
- Markdown editing tools - lots of the sync style 'notes' apps do this, perhaps a little more advanced than necessary
- A solution for uploading images - I suppose I could use just put a new directory in the WebDAV 'drive' and use it directly
- A draft / sandbox area for posts that I'm actively working on - maybe a separate 'drive' for draft posts could work, but I'd probably need to hack the Pico CMS to display them correctly and for my eyes only (though this could be facilitated by WebDAV permissions perhaps)
So there's some stuff to think more about and work on when I get a spare moment.
More broadly this approach could work well for managing content in simple websites. On that note, one other thought - I wonder if there is a way you could you inject data into the content?