I blog the way that I do because of certain mental quirks [digression deleted] that make it hard for me to blog any other way. Still, I’m convinced I could do better, with a little help. So I fantasize about a WordPress plugin that could take care of at least some of the bits that I find difficult… what it would have to do, how would it interact within WordPress, what would the user see, how to avoid wheel reinvention, etc.
I call it the Composelicious Magic Note Assistant. Here’s what it (hypothetically) does:
Are you good at microblogging? Semi-automate the process of composing and posting longer articles in a way that preserves your individual writing style and avoids looking like a spambot.
Hourly, Composelicious grabs your new bookmarks from your delicious account and/or other social bookmarking sites, saving them as “notes” which you can use as the building blocks of future articles. You can also convert existing draft posts into “notes”.
Composelicious sorts your notes, assembling rough article Pasteboards on your assorted topics, and searches for blog posts you’ve previously published and/or for offsite content which you may want to link to in your final draft. It minds the options you’ve entered regarding min/max amount of post content, and it also helps you post in a timely manner by prioritizing urgent/aging notes. And then it can send you an email to prompt you to review a nearly-complete Pasteboard.
When you’re at the Pasteboard, you can change the order of the notes; add, delete, or hide them; move notes to different Pasteboards if the plugin has erroneously categorized their topics; and finally press the Go button. Composelicious then makes the Pasteboard into a draft Post; you do your final read-through and rewrite on the conventional Edit Post page, and then publish the article.
Custom post types that Composelicious needs: two. MagicNotes and Pasteboards.
Questions begged: sorting notes by topic; what if I don’t use any social bookmarking sites; note urgency/aging and the posting schedule; automagically finding related content on other sites; prevention of double-posting a bookmark or other content; should it really be called Composelicious Magic Note Assistant. For now, I will spare you my further thoughts on those subjects.
Anyone interested in kicking some ideas around with me?
The Composelicious: I fantasize about a WordPress plugin that doesn’t exist by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.