One of the reasons I built my website was because I wanted to write more stuff. I added a blog page for longer pieces of writing, and a notes page for unstructured snippets; random thoughts, status updates and links to cool stuff I'd found

An issue I very quickly found was that my workflow (if you want to call it that) was awkward considering when and where I wanted to write, versus when and where I could actually publish.

My site is built with eleventy and deployed with Netlify and when I finally understood that publishing a blog post just meant writing an .md file, putting it into the right folder and deploying my changes, I was amazed at how easy it was - I was expecting it to be much more complex than CMS website builders that I was previously used to.

The problem was, especially with short-form notes, the time gap between me writing a post on my phone, and sitting down at my computer to copy the post, fix the formatting, and publish the changes was pretty significant. So much so that I've got a pile of posts that have never made it out of my drafts folder

I'm pleased to say though that I've finally found a solution

I use an app called Working Copy that clones my GitHub repo to my phone, and then syncs every time there's a change on either side. (Auto-syncing is a pro feature but manual syncing works on the free version. The pro upgrade is a one-time fee for £30)

I then use Outerline - a simple app for writing markdown (£9.99 one-time-purchase). Outerline can save files wherever you want, so I've set my Library to the Posts folder in my cloned repo. I write a new post, rename it to match my naming conventions, move it into the right folder and hit save. Working Copy notices the change and commits it, which triggers Netlify to deploy a new build

To make things even more straightforward for publishing Notes, I've got a Shortcut set up that gets the current date & time, and asks me for the content and any links or tags, then converts it into frontmatter and opens the file in Outerline for me to review and save

I'm glad to finally have this working. If all has gone to plan then this very post will be published directly to my site, all from the (moderate) comfort of my train seat as I travel up to Newcastle for Converge 2026