WordPress Tutorial: How to Use WordPress as an Online Notebook

Carl Natale 18th November Software Leave a Comment

The best notebook for you depends on how you think and organize. The same goes for online note taking. There are a lot of options.

But I’ve been using WordPress blogs to take notes when I have Internet access. Why?

Access notes from anywhere
WordPress is a great writing app
Notes are searchable
Categories and tags help you organize thought
Turn notes into blog entries

Here’s how I use WordPress as a notebook:

Draft Entries

You don’t have to publish everything you write. You can save drafts and take advantage of the categories and tags. Drafts also are searchable.

“Press This”

WordPress has coding for a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser’s bookmarks. Click on it and you will get a mini-post writing window with a link to the page you want to remember. Then save the post as a draft. All formatting, categorization and tagging options are available from the “Press This” window.

Mobile

WordPress has iPhone and Android apps so you can save your notes from anywhere. The “Share This” function in Android will let you choose WordPress so you can save photos, web pages, video and text to your notebook.

Post Via E-mail

Your WordPress blog will post any e-mails you send to it. This makes it easy to update from anywhere. The problem is that all the posts become live.

WordPress.com

You can create free blogs on WordPress.com and keep the content private. This allows you to create an account that serves solely as your online notebook. Since you don’t have to save everything as a draft, you can use the e-mail option to post private content.

Secret Blog

Instead of using WordPress.com, I created a secret directory on my website that contains a WordPress blog no one knows about. This is my noteblog. I can send notes via e-mail, the “Press This” bookmarklet and smart phone. Perhaps this is extreme, but it gives me a feeling of more control than the other cloud options.

Conclusion

Give WordPress a try – it does a great job of keeping track of my ideas. I’ve also provided another useful link for those of you who give WordPress a try and it doesn’t pan out for you.