WordPress Tutorial: How to Use WordPress as an Online Notebook


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.

5 Tips for Remembering and Organizing Ideas


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Carl Natale is a freelance blogger who writes about tips and advice for small businesses. He runs the site Expensiccino.com - a site about how top brands set their prices.

Discussion

  1. Rori Lieurance on the 18th November

    You are brilliant. I never even thought of this. Geez, I can’t wait to start using it like this! Thank you!!

    • MyLife MyTrip on the 19th November

      I think we all need to be a bit careful when we update our post via email because it goes live right the way before we realize our mistake or miss of something we want to cover in the post.

  2. Brandon Cox on the 18th November

    Wow! Carl, this seems so simple that I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I already manage a bunch of WordPress blogs on my iphone and I already use Press This all the time. I also can’t seem to get into Evernote. I’ve now set up a private WP.com blog for this purpose. You are awesome!!

  3. Gabriele Maidecchi on the 21st November

    This is a very innovative idea, I am not sure though if I am going to like it more than using Evernote. The fact I can have a dedicated app for each of my devices is a big plus, as I can’t really get much into the WordPress app for iOS.
    I guess I’ll have to give it a try anyway, thanks.

  4. Franck | Papa Blogueur on the 14th December

    This configuration of wordpress is an Amazing idea !
    Thanks for this news

  5. Jackson on the 15th February

    Hi Carl Natale Your articles very useful, I try to use some thank you!!

  6. Ed on the 8th March

    Thanks for the noteblog idea!

  7. Christina on the 18th March

    Until I read this article, I thought I had come up with a completely unique idea. 🙂

    I set up a website like this for me a few months ago because I had a ton of bookmarks, but I couldn’t remember why I bookmarked them… with this system, I can use “Press This” for only the most important sentences or paragraphs on a page that I would normally bookmark and I can even add my own notes.

    I’m slowly moving all my bookmarks to my new private website and I feel so much more organized!

    And I love that each post has a link to the original website so I can always go back and review the whole article/website.

  8. Bill Gibson, II on the 23rd June

    There are some WP shortcodes that you can add to your postings, via email, that can cause the posting to be a “draft” and attach categories to the posting. You embed them at the top (they might work elsewhere), of your email.

    Add “[category ablogcat]” without the quotes, where “ablogcat” is one of the categories in the blog to which you are posting.

    “[status publish | pending | draft | private]” choose the status you want and remove the rest.

    Other WP email shortcodes:

    Post by Email
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-email/

  9. Carrynotes on the 15th December

    Carrynotes is another online note taking website. You can review http://www.carrynotes.com to remember, manage and keep track of your learning’s for free.

  10. drock on the 11th October

    Thanks for this simple and straight to the point post. I did not know of the Press This feature in wordpress.you are my favorite person today.

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