Blogging from email
Thu Jul 13 12:15:35 BST 2006
The data entry process for a blog usually consists of entering the post on a webpage, or writing a set of text files on a computer and running a script over the result to upload to a weblog. The first approach limits you to the editing capabilities of the web browser, while the second requires a higher level of technical expertise.
An alternative approach would be to email the post to an email account connected to a procmail script that passes the email to a processing script. The processing script takes the date and subject from the email headers, tags specified at the start of the email and then runs Markdown over the actual blog post to produce the HTML.
Authentication can be handled by entering a password as a separate password tag in the email. The security of this can be enhanced by using encrypted email or one-time passwords if necessary.
The advantage of this approach over the other methods mentioned earlier is that people are used to writing email so there is no barrier to entry.
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