Publishing and scheduling

Build and host#

openblog build

writes a complete static site to dist/: pages, RSS and JSON feeds, a sitemap, a search index, and the assets. Upload that folder to any static host, or run openblog serve to host it yourself.

Drafts#

draft: true keeps a post out of every build and feed. openblog serve --drafts previews drafts locally. The admin editor shows drafts with their own badge.

Scheduling#

Give a post a date in the future and it is scheduled:

date: 2026-12-25T09:00:00Z

Scheduled posts stay out of the pages, feeds, sitemap, and search index. When the time comes, openblog serve rebuilds by itself. On a static host, any openblog build after that time publishes it, so a daily build (a cron job or a scheduled workflow) is enough.

The admin editor#

For editing from a browser, including on the server that hosts the blog:

openblog user add you
openblog serve --admin

Then open /admin. It writes the same Markdown files, so you can mix both ways of working. docs/admin.md covers running it safely on the public internet.

Feeds and cross-posting#

/rss.xml carries the full post HTML and /feed.json is JSON Feed 1.1. Most newsletter and cross-posting tools accept either. If you republish a post elsewhere, set the copy's canonical URL to its address here; for a post that was first published elsewhere, set canonical: in its front matter.

Continue with Safely cross-posting your blog for a review-first workflow covering Hashnode, DEV, Medium, Ghost, and WordPress.

That is the whole workflow. Delete this series when your own posts arrive, or keep it as a reference.