UIs for creating and editing posts are different and it's confusing

Feedback
1

I’ve been using WriteFreely for a week and I’m liking it a lot, but I still cannot get used to how confusing the post creation/editing views and workflows are.

When creating a post, I can choose to which blog it should be posted, but I cannot schedule it or set it’s language. If I choose a blog different than Drafts posting it would result in publishing it immediately.

When editing a post, I can schedule it and set it’s language, but I can’t move it to a different blog. For that I have to go to the list of posts for that blog and use “move to” from there.

So workflows like “create a post to a certain blog and schedule it” are cumbersome, as I have to:

  1. go to the post creation view
  2. write the post
  3. save it to drafts
  4. visit the list of posts for that blog
  5. click on “edit”
  6. now I can set the date for the post
  7. save
  8. choose “move to” from the list of posts.

Ideally this could be greatly simplified:

  1. Go to the post creation view
  2. Write the post, choose the blog and choose the date all in the same view
  3. Click “publish”

It’s especially frustrating when a post I wanted to schedule (or publish as a post written in the past) gets published and automatically federates to the Fediverse, and I can’t undo that

2 Likes
2

Thanks for this feedback, @kuba-orlik. I agree on all these points, and think it can definitely be improved.

To understand why things are designed the way they are, it’s probably helpful to know that WriteFreely was hyper-optimized for a very simple and specific use-case: writing and publishing as quickly as possible. Many (if not most) current users publish their posts immediately, and don’t need to schedule content, so it was very intentionally left out of the publishing UI.

However, I’m coming around to the idea that we’ve hit a ceiling of usefulness, and now we should enable more streamlined publishing and editing workflows. I’d love to continue getting your input as we move in that direction, and talk about any ways you might contribute, if you’re interested.

1 Like
3

Cool! I don’t know much about go, but I can definitely help out on the front-end side :muscle: