Blogging when you don’t have internet access
Time management is an important part of being a blogger. There are only so many hours in the day and sometimes other aspects of your life can eat into the time you set aside for blogging – heck, even checking the emails to your blog can take up a lot of your blogging time!
If you are lucky enough to own a laptop then you are also lucky enough to be able to blog when you don’t have access to the internet. As time goes on internet access is becoming easier and easier to come by but there are still situations when you may have time on your hands but no net access. This is a very common problem for me because i travel so much. I’m frequently on long bus and plane journey’s. Thankfully, i have a ultra portable laptop with a 10.6 inch screen. It can be a pain to write on for long periods of time but the portability and great battery life make up for that (though the laptop is over 2 years old now and the battery life is getting really poor).
If you have to travel every day to work via bus or have a flight coming up then take your laptop and use the time wisely. Infact, if you have to go on the bus for an hour or so every day your in a position to write the majority of your posts whilst going to work which frees up a lot more time in your schedule.
Writing blog posts offline
Without internet access, you cannot access your blog admin area so you cannot save posts in the way you usually do. However, you can still work away – you just need to save your work and post it later.
Heres how i do it :
- I created a folder called ‘Blog Posts’. Sounds like an obvious thing to do but keeping the posts you write organised will save you time later when you transfer them to your blog.
- Write my posts in Wordpad. No doubt there are much better alternatives available but i prefer the simplicity of wordpress. It’s already installed on all windows laptops and it does everything you need it to do.
- Place the name of the blog post at the top of the wordpress file and underline it. Not neccessary really but it’s best to keep things neat and tidy.
- Once i’ve written the post i save it in the ‘Blog Posts’ folder and save any pictures or screenshots i may be using in a subfolder called images.
- Once i get internet access i simply copy and paste all the articles i wrote whilst i was offline and publish them on my blog.
You can find wordpad under the accessories section in your start menu. You could also use notepad for writing your posts but that’s too limited in my opinion and its difficult to fix mistakes as you are only allowed one undo.
The one thing you should do whilst using wordpad is make sure word wrap is on. You can do this via view,options in wordpad (select ‘wrap to window’). If word wrap is not selected you will get the dreaded horizontal scroll bar.
Overview
I’m the first to admit that blogging without internet access can limit what you can and cannot write about however you should be able to finish some posts and make a start on others. Not only will this pass the time on your boring journey, it will save you a lot of time when you get back home.
I’d love to hear from those who have a laptop and write posts whilst offline. I’m sure there’s some readers out there who have to sit on boring bus journeys every week!!! 
Thanks,
Kevin
Written by Kevin Muldoon from Blog Themes ClubPosted on June 7th, 2007 and filed under Blogging
Do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates
12 Responses to “Blogging when you don’t have internet access”
Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments
Trackbacks
-
[...] Blogging when you don’t have internet access [...]
-
Reboxetine….
Vestra reboxetine….
Comments are closed.
Comments are closed since this post is older than 30 days. However, you can continue this discussion in our popular Blogging Forums
Sponsors
Blogging Tips Newsletter
Sign up to the Blogging Tips Newsletter for Free today and get a free ebook!
Webmaster Corner
A collection of top Wordpress themes, Web hosting and resources available to web site owners.
|
There are indeed much better alternatives then Wordpad. Try Windows Live Writer or BlogDesk, and these aren’t the only ones. They both let you save your posts for later publication. I would recommend Windows Live Writer because you can see exactly how the post will look like when you publish it. It uses the style from your blog to show you exactly how the post will look like as you write it. It also lets you create new categories from inside the software, add technorati tags, uploads the pictures you insert in the post, edit posts already published and much more.
I usually wake up around 3-4AM, so at 5:30AM when its light outside I’m taking my laptop out in the garden and write the longer posts. It’s much easier for me to write the long posts outside then sitting at my desk.
I used to write posts whilst I was offline, but then one time I wrote a post that used the word “whilst” about 4 times. I promised myself that I would never write offline again.
Forget wordpad, i cant write offline using anything but notepad – el expresso
That’s a great habit to get into. The “down” time you have is valuable if you make it so. Add it up. 365 hours a year regained if you do that. That’s 9 Weeks of blogging!
Then get up an extra hour a day. You can really see the power in using your time wisely.
I personally use MS word. I find the spelling and grammar checker very helpful. My Internet had been playing up recently so I have been writing my posts while its broken and then uploading them later.
As far as getting up early goes I have trouble getting up when my alarm goes off! So trying to get up an hour early is something I would really have to work on.
I too was going to suggest Live Writer or BlogDesk. They are both great programs and enable you to create posts offline.
I would not suggest Word. It adds a ton of incompatible code to your posts and may actually mess with the whole layout of your blog site.
I’ve done this before just once or twice when I didn’t have internet access and it’s genius! Usually I’m a huge procrastinator but when I do do this it’s a big help. I usually use Word but maybe it would be smarter to use Wordpad because MS Word takes longer to load and open… A couple times it has actually made my PC lock up.
Anyway… Great post.
I found this post to be very helpful. I’ll certainly keep it in mind as I travel around from one blogging conference to another. I enjoy reading your blog!
what if i don’t have computer too?
i used to use paper and pen tough
@Jack Books: very funny!
Very useful article, this is what I tend to do on trains!