How To Compose A Blog!

Have I lost my mind posting something with that title?   I hope not.

Here's what I've noticed...

Some write blogs directly inside of the blogging application.   e.g.,  They open the edit window right here in AR and start typing.   Don't do that!!   This is not the best approach.  Here's why:

You should compose your posts offline and you should use Notepad or any other generic text editor to create your copy.

OFFLINE COMPOSING

Offline means you're not connected to the internet.  This means you can write on your laptop anywhere, no WiFi needed.  That's even another benefit!

Why compose this way?

Because often the first thought that flows from your head to your fingers *may* not be your best version. 
When you compose offline,  you have time to proof and edit (and edit again) before going live.   Also, when you write offline, you can hit SAVE, keeping a local copy safely tucked away on your frequently backed-up hard drive.  :)

The risk of composing online:  The most common is typos and grammar bloopers.   More deadly is the browser crash potential.   If you browser dies while you're in mid-post on AR ... poof!  your work is gone!

THE TEXT EDITOR PART

There are generally two components to a finished post.   Copy and layout.   These should not be done at the same time.  Write the words, edit them, check the grammar, spell-check it... if you're not a good proofer, then have someone else give it a quick once-over.

When your copy has "been approved" THEN do your layout work which generally is cropping images.

With your approved copy and images, THEN head to ActiveRain and copy paste in your text.    If you are using Firefox, you will have one last crack at typos as Firefox will underline those words that it doesn't recognize. 

A tiny warning:  Firefox does not check spelling in the title because the spell checker is enabled only for textarea fields, not text input fields.  That's easy to change which I'll explain in my next post!

(By the way, the reason for using a text editor is that is doesn't format the text.   However, if you want bold, red fonts, then using Word or any other word processor is fine.   Personally, I'm a text guy because I'm a big believer in keeping the copy and format efforts separate.)