A static blog backed by version control is defacto choice for developers today. Thanks to the zillion frameworks - Hugo, Gatsby, Nextjs, Nuxtjs and my favorite Astrojs. On a dev box posting is as simple as writing markdown on your favorite editor.
Well, how do I create blog posts using my phone? Turns out we can have a workflow with 3 essential android apps. Let’s dive deep.
Meta note
A brief tour of the tech stack behind this website.
- Hand rolled blog engine based on astrojs
- All content in markdown
- Hosted on cloudflare pages. Deployed via a CI pipeline from a git repo
- Sparingly use images, use gimp for edits
Usually I write the posts using neovim and do a git push. Automation takes
over from there and deploys it in minutes.
Setting the repo
Our mobile workflow will need a git client for android. The official github app doesn’t suffice since we need push, pull and commit capabilities.
Enter mgit. The app provides basic UX but does the job pretty well.
You can use ssh or app password with github or similar. App supports generating a cert. Only other customization was setting up the repo root directory to a simple path. E.g. Documents/src.
Writing a post
Markor is the goto app for this. Though originally designed to be a note taking app, I found the editor and preview functionality work seamlessly for editing any markdown files.
Here are the configuration notes.
- I keep the notes and blog content in two different git repos. Markor uses notes directory as it’s root.
- Add a bookmark for the blog directory for easy access from markor home page.
- Use the snippets feature to scaffold new posts.
It took a while for me to figure how snippets work from the release notes and source code. Please refer below links.
In the root directory (/<notes root>/.apps/snippets/<filename>.md) create a
template file like below.
Editing images
I have settled with the Snapseed app for image editing needs. Simple interface and does the job.
Supports quick watermark with the Double exposure tool. I created a transparent png in desktop gimp and reuse it on the phone for watermarks.
My biggest gripe is that it doesn’t support collages. Don’t have an alternative yet.
Try it out
So far so good. This post is a test using the above tools. I look forward to few more posts over the next two weeks with the same setup. Let’s see how it goes.