There is a nice plugin that I found recently that lets me write blog posts in VIM and post them right away. I think it’s rather well done and recommend it (assuming this blog gets posted).

This plugin is called “vimblog,” but it only actually works for Wordpress out of the box. I’m not really going to beat a dead horse with as stick here, though, because the author of the plugin already has installation instructions and some images.

Vim Plugins Page

Installation Instructions / Main Page

Images on Flickr

However, he didn’t really put up usage instructions. It’s easy enough, though, and I found some information in the source code (and cleaned it up a bit):

Usage for deleting a post:
    :Blog del id
Usage for saving a draft of a post:
    :Blog draft
Usage for Publishing a post:
    :Blog publish
Usage for getting the list of Categories:
    :Blog cl
Usage for Get Post [id]:
    :Blog gp id
Usage for New Post:
    :Blog np
Usage for Recent [x] Posts (defaults to last 10):
    :Blog rp [x]
Usage is :Blog option [arg]
    switches:
        - rp [x]   => show recent [x] posts
        - gp id    => get post with identification id
        - np       => create a new post
        - publish  => publish an edited/new post
        - draft    => save edited/new post as draft
        - gc       => get the list of categories
        - del id   => delete post with identification

It has some nice features, as you can see:

• Listing categories / old blog posts
• Has some nice information at the top of the page you’re editing (see below)
• Handles categories and just about everything you’d want

When working with a blog post, it has information like this:

Post     : [54]
Title    : Using VIM to Blog (Wordpress)
Date     : 04/03/2008 15:10:46 GMT
Link     : http://garoth.com/?p=54
Permalink: 
Author   : 1
Comments : 1
Pings    : 1
Categs   : Website

Which is actually very nice and handy, I think.

I just started using it, but it seems to have few small flaws:

• No way to add categories? (Of course, you could log in to do this.)
• Syntax highlighting seems to get messed up a bit. (Fixable. There is a Markdown (see below) syntax file around.)
• No way to get back to a draft? (Don’t use this feature and just save your posts to your computer.)

Another thing I should mention: using this kind of thing with Vim is great especially if you have markdown installed on your website :D. Markdown simplifies post syntax for doing things like lists, etc. It’s meant to be more human-readable, and even people who have never seen it before should be able to understand what it will do.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with this stuff.