Title: Composing posts offline Last modified: February 7, 2017 --- # Composing posts offline * [karenjg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karenjg/) * (@karenjg) * [21 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/composing-posts-offline/) * I’m pleased to anounce the birth of my very first “hack”! ::beaming:: I’d give out cigars, but I don’t want to run afoul of any no-smoking policies. Of course, it’s only a baby hack – maybe it’s not even a *real* hack as the gods of geekdom define the term… It’s more like a “how to,” since everybody would have to do their own, but still, I’m pleased… Er… where was I? Oh, yeah. Composing posts off line. One of the reasons I chose to try out WordPress was the “feature” that lets you email posts. But I was disappointed to learn that you can’t set the category or the ping back, or track back, or whether to save or publish… you can’t do anything EXCEPT post. Besides that, if you email it you have to go through a whole other set of complications. – Setting up a secret email address, checking it from the admin panel or setting up a chron job… it all seemed like too much work to me. So I figured out how to create a local copy of the post form that lets you do everything you can do on the web version (set the category, ping status, etc). When you click one of the processing buttons (draft, private, publish or advanced edit) it behaves just like the web version – that is, it connects to the database and enters the information. I like this because I can save the post on my hard drive until I’m ready to publish it. And I can save multiple “ posts in progress” and find them easily. Plus, in the shared-server environment of my web host, _unnecessary_ connections to the database are frowned on, and using the “draft” option and making a number of revisions – while probably not* that* much of an extra load, _is_ an _unnecessary_ load. So, here’s how. Go to your post page and hit “view source” (this is in the “view” menu in most browsers, but some have it in the edit menu, I believe). Save the source as an html file, and I’d suggest using a different name. (I oh-so-creatively used “postform.htm”) Copy the URL (or URI) of the web-accessed post form from your browser’s location bar. Go down to the section of the source code that says: `
` Replace “post.php” with the ENTIRE URL from your browser’s location bar (and include the quotes). You’ll want to remove the bookmarklet at the bottom because it will cause javascript errors when the form is accessed locally (because the things can’t be found on your hard drive)… That’s the part that starts with `

WordPress bookmarklet

remove all down to the part that says
` and goes down to `
` Now I’m off to explore the mysteries of this thing called “CSS.” * Thread Starter [karenjg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karenjg/) * (@karenjg) * [21 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/composing-posts-offline/#post-81776) * That bad, huh? Sorry. I’ll go quietly. ::slinking off:: * Thread Starter [karenjg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karenjg/) * (@karenjg) * [21 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/composing-posts-offline/#post-81964) * Well, you could be right. I’m not always sure what will interest People Who Are Not Me. 🙂 I just saw that a lot of people seemed to be having trouble with the email-to-post feature, and thought this might be a reasonable alternative. Plus those people with dial-ups who don’t want to sit online while they compose. Personally not a big fan of the “copy and paste” method, but you’re right, it’s not like it’s all that hard – it’s just extra clicks/keystrokes. I haven’t actually saved any PIPs yet, but I have walked away to “think on it,” then come back to revise. I suppose it also helps that I have a spellchecker on my browser (pause for gratuitous plug for ASPELL – I love it!). Oh, and one more tip – i f you want it to look different, just leave the style sheet (wp-admin.css) out of the folder – you’re left with a very plain html form (AND you can change the size of the text box), but it still works. Thanks for the thanks! * [Root](https://wordpress.org/support/users/root/) * (@root) * [21 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/composing-posts-offline/#post-81969) * There is no *footer* in the default. It is id credits. * Thread Starter [karenjg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karenjg/) * (@karenjg) * [21 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/composing-posts-offline/#post-81974) * Huh. Weird. Maybe I didn’t get the default? I just checked again, and this is what’s at the bottom of the “view source” `