Have you ever been out and thought to yourself, “this would make a great post?”, but the thought was lost by the time you got to your nearest computer? Well, a feature that a lot of bloggers forget about is the “Posting by Email” feature that comes with your Wordpress Software.
To be able to use this feature, you MUST have a wordpress blog installed on a server that you control, either from home or through a hosting service. The main reason your need to be able to have control over your server is because you need to be able to manage your own domain’s email service to use this feature.
To get Started:
1) Go to your hosting plan or server and create your a unique email address. This is the address you will send your posts to, so NO ONE but authors of the site should know this email address.
2) Go to your DashBoard>Writing>Posting by Email and provide the correct information that is requested: Mail Server, Login, Password and Default Category. Please note that your login info varies with your server provider:
3) To being writing your message via email:
- Start up your Email Program
- To: Your Super Secret Email Address
- Subject Line: This is where the Title of your Post Goes
- Body: This is where the body of your post will go. You can go ahead and use HTML tags in the body to link any keyphrases or what not. Make sure not to use the rich text formatting features on your email client as that can screw up how the post looks on your blog.
4) The final step is to set up your Wordpress to automatically check for new posts, which is also you can set up to do automatically.
This is really a great feature for those of you who have Blackberries, Sidekicks or other PDAs and are at live events where you want to update in real time to let your readers know what’s going on. If you don’t have one of these devices, most cell phones these days have the option to send email via text messaging, so look into your cell phone plan for that.
*Extra Tip - Writing the Time Stamp in your post would also greatly add value to your post.*
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This is a good idea that many people don’t think about until it’s too late.
You could alternatively take notes in your cell phone and read back over them later– or just use a notepad or voice recorder.
Can you set the category, or are you forced to post in the default one.
Can this be used to save post, not automatically publish them?
This is a good idea, but it runs into some problems - like formatting, pictures and the like. Personally, I write down all my thoughts in my handy dandy notebook and then type it up later
I do exactly this…and it comes in handy. Only problem is I’ve got like 50 potential posts. LOL! I also do what Jon Lee does. Write it down. Good post, Gary.
Interesting - I saw this feature, thought it would be helpful, but never set it up when I started, and here I am; I stumble across your entry, and it strikes me again as a good idea - that Blackberry will come in handy, after all! Thanks for the spring reminder!