Can I write blog entries offline?

  • Unknown's avatar
    cathystang · Member ·

    I’m using an iPhone and the WordPress app. I want to write a blog entry and add a few photos every day while I’m traveling across Spain. I should have WiFi most of the time, but if the WiFi is very slow, or I don’t have WiFi at all, and I don’t want to use cellular, can I still write my entries each day and just publish the next time I have WiFi access?

    I tried a test and received an error message saying the post failed to publish (no surprise, I just thought it might save it somewhere and publish whenever internet was available). I also tried to save the post as a draft, not even trying to publish, just save, and got “Error occurred during saving”. Also adding photos to the entry from my phone didn’t work without internet access.

    Surely lots of travel writers go days without internet access! How can I save each day’s blog entries and accompanying photos when I don’t have internet access?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    if the WiFi is very slow, or I don’t have WiFi at all, and I don’t want to use cellular, can I still write my entries each day and just publish the next time I have WiFi access?

    Yes, the mobile apps do work offline, so you don’t need a connection in order to create drafts. Just keep in mind such drafts will only exist on your device, so if they’re deleted there, or something happens to your device, there will be no way to restore content that had not been synced to our servers.

    I tried a test and received an error message saying the post failed to publish (no surprise, I just thought it might save it somewhere and publish whenever internet was available). I also tried to save the post as a draft, not even trying to publish, just save, and got “Error occurred during saving”.

    The Publish command won’t work, no – you need an active connection to do that. In this regard the app is different from a messaging or email app, for example, that will queue saved messages to send once there is a connection. The app does not have such a queueing feature available, and you’ll need to go back to the post once you have a connection in order to actually publish it.

    Nor will “Save as draft”, as that is used to sync a draft to our servers without publishing it. But the app will automatically save your drafts as you type them, and the moment you tap the back button to leave the editor.

    If you do want to explicitly save to make sure, tap the settings icon (three dots next to the publish button), access post settings, and click on Status. Then select Draft. Now the Publish button will change to a Save button, allowing you to manually save drafts on the device itself.

    Also adding photos to the entry from my phone didn’t work without internet access.

    This is expected, as the image cannot be uploaded to our servers without an active connection. Keep in mind that no image you add to a post is actually added directly to the post – images are actually uploaded to your site’s media library and then embedded into the post from there.

    But you can add it to the post and a placeholder for the image will be placed in the draft, and you can continue adding additional content to that. Once you’re connected, tap the Retry button on the posts list or edit the post and tap on the images themselves to start uploading them to your media library. Just make sure you don’t delete, move or rename the image on your phone before this happens.

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