Stackedit.io - The importance of making drafts off-site

Drafting 101

Well, glad that downtime is finally over (we hope!) I swear I was going through some massive withdraws not being able to check in on STEEM and especially since now I feel so behind because I had to finish up some posts late and didn't have access to some drafts and templates which means I have to push some planned posts back even farther! Argg, that's what I get for going against my rule about starting drafts with a 3rd-party offline program.

I use stackedit.io as my 3rd-party program. It is a Markdown editor which you can use online right on the website, or install it as a Chrome extension (or a Chrome app if you are using a Chromebook - see screenshot below)

^{I already have it installed, so when I browse to the site I can click that square-arrow at the end of my omnibar to launch the app (or from launcher too) - but that is where a '+ sign in a circle' would be if you don't have it installed as an app yet.}

There is no need to install anything - the websire is full-featured, but I prefer the app installed on my Chromebook as it integrates with my menus and other apps, plus becomes an option for opening files right from my file manager.

There is a lot you can do with Stackedit. You can set it up to sync with a private gitlab repo (github too) and basically once you do that once, it's like "set and forget" because it will just keep all your drafts synced automatically. There are quite a few different places you can sync too, including making local copies of course. I like using a GitLab repo because this way I have revision history, and it acts as a way to store my drafts which makes cross-posting a lot easier!

Basically I have one repo and different branches for the different places I post my blogs. I post most of my stuff first to STEEM, then when it expires I cross-post to Publish0x where it can continue earning forever. So I have my master branch set up for STEEM and then a branch for Publish0x. In Stackedit you can create workstations so I have one for STEEM and another for Publish0x, syncing to the same repo but depending on the workstation it will sync to the appropriate branch.
Of course, sometimes I have to make some adjustments to my post if I've written things specific to STEEM or written like I'm speaking to you Steemians, but that's why it's handy to have a draft saved somewhere like Stackedit because editing also becomes a breeze.

Just like with SteemPeak - where I have a multitude of templates saved - you can also setup templates in Stackedit. You can also export in either markdown or HTML, and there is the option to set up your own 'Styled' HTML, and basically it would insert your document in the body section of your HTML styled sheet.
I need to export to HTML when publishing to Publish0x but I just export a plain HTML text file, open it in my browser then select all and paste it into the Publish0x editor because the formatting is kept so it makes it super easy and like WYSIWYG editing!