Markdown editor for blogger

Markdown is quite popular these days and I like it for it’s simplicity. So I’ve been searching for a way to integrate it in my blog writing workflow. In Blogger, it’s unfortunately not an option.

There I could go:

• either for WYSIWYG editor or
• manual HTML writing.

However WYSIWYG generates too much HTML I don’t need. Moreover some pre-publish manual HTML editing is a pain then. And the other option I consider it rather slow/unproductive.

So, I looked for other options, and found stackedit.io. Even this post is (and couple others as well) written in it.

stackedit

I consider Stackedit great as it:

• is Markdown editor,
• is open source (see github repo),
• has awesome UI (including live preview, key bindings, …),
• has integration with other popular services that I use anyway:
  
  • for storage (google drive, …) and
  • for publishing (blogger,…),
• has active community (just check the stars count and commit activity on the github repo) and
• has impressive feedback time (resolution on my issues/questions came in couple hours)

So my post writing/editing workflow goes like this:

1. write/edit post on stackedit.io,
2. sync it to google drive and
3. publish/republish it to blogger.

That’s it! No further in-blogger updates required!

Blogger specifics

Still there are some specifics in my workflow (to provide smooth blogger integration).

• using the Interpreted variables: title and tags via:

---
title: Markdown editor for blogger
tags: blogger markdown stackedit.io
---

• syntax highlighting via prettify (I use in my blog posts) on blogger works for me using: Github fenced code blocks

simplified posts template

Those of you who have been here before have probably noticed the new look of my blog.
I like it as it brings quite some simplicity, which I consider important for the writer as well as for the readers.

The reason for the change was the fact I got stuck with things I wanted show and dynamic templates on blogger just didn't behave.

Moreover posting code snipplets is quite frequent for me and doing it the way I used to (as suggested in the post: http://peter-butkovic.blogspot.com/2012/06/code-syntax-highlighting-in-blog-posts.html) was just too much complicated.

So welcome to my simplified blog design. Hope you'll enjoy it :)

code syntax highlighting in blog posts

Problem: Need to syntax highlight the code in the blog posts (to improve it's readability).
Solution: github's gist (http://gist.github.com/)

OK now what's the story? I tried to find some simple solution for me to be used in the blogger.com in the dynamic templates.
I've found: gist. 
As one of the quite popular proposals on stackoverflow said :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/679189/formatting-code-snippets-for-blogging-on-blogger

What is gist?
(Copy pasted from their site) "Gist is a simple way to share snippets and pastes with others. All gists are git repositories, so they are automatically versioned, forkable and usable as a git repository."

Sounds good. But when trying it didn't work for the blogger and dynamic templates.
After some googling found following post:
http://blog.moski.me/2012/01/gist-with-bloggers-dynamic-views.html
and that worked for me!

So since from now on, you can expect some nicely highlighted code snippets in my posts :)

Repost new blog notification to social networks

Problem: How to automatically send status notifications on the new blog posts on blogger to google+, facebook and twitter?
Solution: Two step approach worked for me:
1. use official blogger to google+ integration (to post to google+)
2. use "+Rob Mcgee" (to repost from Google+ to facebook and twitter)

How to achieve it? Go on reading.

Official integration blogger to google+.
Follow the instructions here:
http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1752748
Or more specifically, to merge the profiles do so here:
http://www.blogger.com/switch-profile.g

Google+ to Facebook and Twitter reposting
Use the site with the official instructions: http://gplus.sagg.im/
I've found this approach on:
http://lifehacker.com/5868019/how-can-i-post-to-facebook-twitter-andor-google%252B-all-at-the-same-time

In fact I need to test it somewhere, so if you see this post in all these 3, it should be working fine.
Let's see :)