I'm curious how other people organize their thoughts, and whether people rely on the drafts feature that seems to be part of every blog and email system on the web?

I have two or three half-written articles to fall back on when I can't come up with anything to post. I try to spend one day a week at a minimum out shooting for my blog, but, this past weekend, I actually came to a dirt road I wasn't able to cross. And there was really only one good image from the bunch. In a situation like that, it's nice to have a back up technical article or whatever.

I also have some long-term articles I'm working on. I've done a comparative tripod review, but it was Cascade Concrete that killed one of the 'pods, so I'm waiting a couple more months before there's enough snow to be able to follow up on the new one.

Finally, I try not to let something I don't intend as long-term sit in the drafts more than a couple weeks. Drafts make a great scratch pad, but only if you don't let them get too cluttered.

The problem I've encountered is that the draft feature enables me to be lazy because I figure I can always go back to it later since it is automatically saved. I've noticed I don't put as much effort into it when I sit down and blog and I'm more prone to do things like abandon a post and never get back to it.

This leaves a bunch of posts that are half written or I only got as far as uploading a photo and making a title sitting there that I will never publish.

Depends.

If I'm reviewing a product at a client site while I'm hooking it up, I'll take some very brief point form notes (they take about a minute) while the client is testing out the product themselves and I can't do anything else.

If I'm creating a post I intend to launch the next day, I write it, save it as a draft, and then publish it. The reason I don't prepublish it is...well, that's the subject of a future blog post, but it's marketing related to a small extent.

Besides using it to save posts I don't finish, I use it to publish them very early in the morning, so everyone will see it the day it comes out regarless of when they check the site. You'd probably want to use the time zone where most of your blog visitors live.

I have a couple of topics which i have as drafts, which i plan to go back to later when i have more info or time to try and make my post a bit more readable as when i rush its erm ununderstandable.. as im sure you can tell from my posts on here.

haha @ Dan.

I never used the Draft feature because Blogger wasn't that easy to get back to your drafts on. So I just worked on them on my computer until it was ready to go.

Wordpress makes drafting a lot easier, I think.

Yea i use wordpress its the only one i used but from what i seen it seems to be the best

I've read that a blogger draft gets published under the day you created it, and not when it went live...? Not sure if that's true or not, but wordpress treats it the same as any other post. And it lists the titles above the text area, making them easy to get to.

I have a couple of drafts saved up for a rainy day when I can't think of anything, mostly technical advice. I've got another one about weather gear that I'm working on, but waiting for the snow to be able to finish. I do let them sit there for a while sometimes - need to watch out for that - but it makes a really convenient scratch pad.

I write draft posts, but I usually haven't uploaded them to WordPress until they're just about ready to publish. I think having posts for a rain day is a great idea.

You might use drafts to publish at some later time. Maybe if you decide to take vacation, but want to maintain your blog. You could have a few drafts and set them to publish while you're away.

Can you do that then tell them to publish on a set date with wordress?

Originally Posted by dansgalaxy

Can you do that then tell them to publish on a set date with wordress?

Yes, just write the post and set its timestamp for whenever you want it to appear.

o yea i even use that me being stupid