WordPress: Two Good Reasons to Save Your Blog Postings as Drafts First

My usual method for writing blog posts is to write it, go over it, make a few structural changes, go over it again looking for typos and misspells, then hit “Publish.” Then I usually read the post as it appears online, find a mistake, go back in and change it, read it again, change it again, etc. I figure I do it so quickly, it really doesn’t matter that I’m sort of editing “live.”

But then I realized that what goes out on RSS is what was there when you hit “Publish” the first time. Oops, that’s not good. Espeicially if you type the web address of a link wrong or something. So now I save as draft, preview the post, save as draft again, preview, etc. Until it’s just how I want it! That’s the first good reason to use your “Save” button before using your “Publish” button.

The other good reason, and actually this is more about creating future content than utilizing “draft mode” for editing, but it’s still important… The other reason, then, is that unforeseen things can pop up, and you might not be able to post on a certain day. Emergencies, or whatever. And it’s good to have a stash of posts saved up ahead of time to use “just in case.”

I’m not talking about a personal blog, like this one. But I have a couple of other blogs where posting regularly is really important to the readers. If you post it, they will come. But if you don’t, why should they?

I’d seen this idea a couple of different places, but it was really driven home to me by a post made by Debra Dera of The Rhythm of Write. She brought up a good point – What if you injure one of your hands? Break your wrist or a finger or something? You won’t be able to blog very well, then, and you’d better have some posts written ahead of time for just such an emergency!

So those are two good reasons to try out and use your “Save” and “Preview” buttons. I intend to start making a habit of it!