Automating Blog Publishing With Python
February 02, 2025
How I made it easier to post slop
When I say automate these blogs, I'm not saying that I use AI to help write them. Instead, I'm referring to automating the process of uploading a finalized post.
I draft and write out these blogs on [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/). I've been using Obsidian since it became popular with the productivity YouTubers in the early 2020s. If you're not already familiar with it, it's a markdown editor which has a cool knowledge graph which is made from linking notes together. The tool is simple and efficient which is why I use it.
### Process Before
Before automating my publishing, I would finish writing in Obsidian then manually:
- Make a new HTML page in Cursor and copy over the HTML from my last post
- Change the title, subtitle, and date
- Copy content from obsidian into the markdown block on this new change
- Push changes to Github from the command line
### Process Now
Today I [finished up a command line tool](https://ronaldjabouinjr.com/blog/iterating-fast-with-ai.html) that simplifies the entire process. Now I only have to input the title, subtitle, path to the file and the entire process is done for me. The new page is created with all the information, it's added to the lists of all my blogs, and it gets pushed to my website.
As I was writing this post, I realized I could further automate the script. Instead of manually inputting the title and subtitle, I could have the script take it from the file name and the first line of the markdown.
EDIT (2/2/2025): I updated the script to automatically check a directory for markdown files. After it finishes proecssing the file, it moves it to a "published" folder. Now the only steps for me to complete are:
1. Write the blog post in Obsidian
2. Put the file in the to-publish folder
3. Run the script
In the future, I'll probably add a scheduled posting feature. But that means I'd have to be ahead on my [blog posts](https://ronaldjabouinjr.com/blog/commute.html).