Writing Software > HTML Output

mikey3times

mikey3times

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This one is for those of you who write a lot of your own content or buy content that you format before posting.

I spend ridiculous amounts of time formatting my posts, both from writers and by me. I'm hoping to find an efficient way to knock an hour or two off my process when posting an article. Side note, I'm not on WP so I can't let Gutenberg do the automatic block formatting.

Right now, I write my posts in Apple Pages and I have a custom template where I have "paragraph formats" for H1, H2, H3, P, links, and lists. Tables are a pain that I usually end up doing manually. This works great because I can write and edit very easily in a semi-WYSIWYG format. I can grab sections of text and format them with a click instead of adding opening and closing tags.

Then, I copy the text and drop it into my CMS or BBEdit and add all the HTML tags, insert the images, etc. This is what takes so much time.

I've tried writing in BBEdit, but I'd like to see the formatting as I write and I also find all the HTML code to be distracting - Live Preview is OK, but it would be awesome if I could make edits in either window instead of only in the code window. Even if I could grab a block of text and click to add opening and closing tags would help.

I've considered installing Dreamweaver to see if I can use it the way I want, but I'm skeptical about that being too bloated for what I need. Its been more than a decade since I even opened that software and it was garbage back then.

Does anyone know of a text editor where I can write WYSIWYG and export to HTML based on formatting criteria I set up?
 
Why not outsource the posting? Saves you 2 hours of your life for like $6 - $10. As long as you can write out instructions (and supplement with a video of you doing it, if it's really that complicated), then any VA can do it.
 
I don't know, but I have the same problem, just with Elementor and I intend so solve it with coding somehow, maybe a plugin for Google Docs.
 
mikey3times said:
I've considered installing Dreamweaver to see if I can use it the way I want, but I'm skeptical about that being too bloated for what I need. Its been more than a decade since I even opened that software and it was garbage back then.
Click to expand...
As a DW user from way back when (I think DW4 was my first one) and someone who can code html and css (plus php and js to a certain extent) it can do exactly what you want it to.

It was always a bit tiresome watching DW users complain it is garbage and writes bloated code when they are doing exactly the same as someone who attempts to write html without really knowing it and then whinges when their document looks like crap in a browser. Garbage in, shit out, and it is exactly the same with DW.

Most of the problems come, I imagine, because they are just using design view and adding and deleting elements in a non-optimal way. If already know html then you will quickly find your way around the interface and be able to use DW in the way that you desire.

Set it up the correct way, use it properly, rtfm and it will quite happily write compliant code (or you can write it yourself in the code window and watch how it comes out in the design window).

I essentially taught myself the languages through watching what was going on in DW's code window and then looking up sites like w3schools (and later, expert blogs) when I wasn't sure what was happening.

I still use the last perpetual licence one (CS6) for the exact reason you are explaining - it saves me time (not only in creating pages, but also with find and replace, synchronisation, ftp and plenty of other features).

If you can pick up a very old copy of DW somewhere in a garage sale it will probably do exactly what you want.
 
Have you ever thought about writing your posts with Markdown syntax and then converting from Markdown to HTML (would take about 1 second).

Once you memorize it, it should add no significant amount of time to your writing process, and save you the entire amount of time required to go back and add HTML. There's probably a text editor that can take Markdown and do the conversion for you at the end, too.

This would disrupt your Mac Pages workflow but it would save a lot more time.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Have you ever thought about writing your posts with Markdown syntax and then converting from Markdown to HTML (would take about 1 second).
Click to expand...

Exactly. When I read your post, @mikey3times, I thought of suggesting markdown. I used to use Typora for writing and formatting, and then export everything to HTML. But most of the editors could work. My process was word->typora->HTML (Typora can import MS word quite well).

I turn to use scripts more and more, so for automating import-export, I just use pandoc cmd utility. Works very well for me.
 
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