If everything goes to plan, this post should appear on this blog, after having been written and auto-published from my iPad.

I realised that I could use Dropbox and Hazel to write on any Dropbox connected device and get my home iMac to automatically build the site using Pelican and rsync it to my Linode server. It works like this:

1. I write the post on my iPhone or iPad using any Dropbox-enabled notes application (I happen to like WriteUp), saving the article in a Dropbox folder called Drafts.

2. When I’m happy with the article, I use WriteUp to move it to a folder called ToPublish.

3. Back on my home iMac, I have set up Hazel to watch the ToPublish Dropbox folder. When a new .txt file appears there, Hazel renames it to prepend the current date and change the extension to .md, moves the file to my Pelican content folder, then runs a shell script to kick off the build and publish process using make, and logs the output with a date stamp to a log file.

If you are seeing this, that process works!