Publishing content to Write.as directly from Obsidian
I love using Write.as to host my blog. I love using Obsidian to manage the bulk of my second brain. And it's the love for these two products that eventually led me down a rabbit hole in search of a way to potentially integrate the two together. Not only did I find a solution, but it works even better than I could've imagined.
Right now, I am writing, editing, and even publishing this blog post directly from within Obsidian. I'm not using a browser, and I'm not on https://write.as in any way. It's as easy as writing a note, adding some frontmatter, running a command palette command, and boom, you have a published blog post. Here's how to do it.
The Write.as Obsidian plugin
At first, I was looking for a way to publish posts from a particular directory on my local machine similarly to how static site generators like Hugo work. My thought was that I could write a blog post in Obsidian, and then move it to a folder configured to automatically publish its contents to Write.as.
I quickly threw that notion aside when I stumbled upon an Obsidian community plugin that makes the process even more seamless. It's aptly named “Writeas Blog Publisher,” and you can find it in the community plugins section of your Obsidian settings or over on GitHub if you want to install it manually.
This may be the simplest plugin I've ever used. Once installed and enabled, you just set your Write.as username and password in the settings. From then on, just add writeas_collection into your frontmatter and set the value to the name of your blog. Once that's done, just run Publish/update from the command palette or type alt+shift+p on your keyboard, and your post will go live on your blog regardless of where the note is located in your vault.
The plugin will automatically pull in some more frontmatter, including the URL and ID for the blog post. And updating those posts is as easy as making any necessary changes and rerunning the Publish/update command. Any updates made will immediately reflect on the respective Write.as blog posts whether you moved your note to another location in your vault or not. It really is that simple.
To make this process even easier, I created a template for my potential blog posts, and I set a hotkey to automatically pull in that template on command. Now, at just a few key presses, I can go from a private note to ready for publication.
Why do this?
I love writing. But I don't do it enough. At least I don't publish my writing enough.
I spend so much time in Obsidian every day journaling, writing mini essays, studying cybersecurity, etc. After years of writing and note-taking, there's a plethora of knowledge in my vault, and I wanted to remove as much friction as possible getting that content from my second brain onto my blog.
Maybe you are like me, and any unnecessary friction will just increase the likelihood of you not accomplishing your goals. Yes, we need to overcome obstacles to achieve all that we set out to do, but setting ourselves up for success can only improve our odds.
It may seem small, but I am hoping systems like this one will increase my output and give me an effective way to express my creativity. And in the end, sometimes it's the little things that bring us the most joy, and I hope this discovery has or will provide you as much joy as it does me.
Massive thanks to Chris Gwilliams for developing this plugin.
Tags: #productivity #apps Write.as Comments: Discuss...