It seemed that the most popular way to keep track of ideas for blog entries is by using the built in draft functionality of WordPress.  You can do this via the Admin Post writing interface or even via offline tools such as Windows Live Writer.  A quick title and a few words, lines about what you want to write about and then save it as a draft.  That draft will happily sit there waiting for you to come back to it when your ready or when you have more info to write down towards the idea/post. Once you get the post where you want it and feel the inspiration to complete it then it is easy to just publish it to your site.

If you want those drafts to appear on your WordPress Dashboard for quick reference then from the main Dashboard page of the admin interface click on Screen Options and select the checkbox next to Recent Drafts:

That in turn will place a panel on your Dashboard showing your drafts:

Those titles are clickable and will take you directly to the post edit page.

That is a great way to keep track of those ideas because you never know when you might log in to your admin interface and be inspired when you see those draft ideas and jump in there to finish writing that next great posting.

A plug in that was mentioned more than once to help manage a long list of drafts is the Drafts Dropdown Plugin developed by Alex King. This plugin places a tab on your Dashboard that gives you on click access to a drop down tab with your drafts listed:

Some other ideas that were mentioned to generate and hold onto those ideas were:

• Good old everyday notepads, notebooks, sticky pads.
• Take a break from blogging to let your mind clear and refresh your writing palate with new ideas.
• Review the comments on your site or on a single blog entry for follow on ideas (that is the method I am using here)
• Peruse RSS feeds or other websites with similar subjects to generate fresh ideas or new twists on one of your blog subjects.
• Someone even mentioned writing down ideas that come up when they over hear discussions on public transportation!

One other plugin that got mentioned for tracking your ideas was the To Do List plugin by David Gwyer.  This plugin places a dialog box on your main Dashboard screen that is a simple text box. Just write your ideas or to do list in there and save it.  That’s it.  I recommend you move it into a prominent place on your Dashboard so you see it each time you log and hopefully get inspired to write that post. No hotlinks in this plugin just a simple electronic version of a notepad.

The bottom line is you have to find your inspiration and plug away.  Blogging is a passion and that makes getting the ideas a lot easier in the long run.

As for the electronic assists I discussed here. I recommend a combination of draft posts to hold your ideas and the use of the Drafts Dropdown Plugin to make your drafts easy to access from within your dashboard. With the quick access to your drafts and then one click to the edit post screen it is the simplest means of working on those inspired postings!

Thanks to everyone who contributed. See ya on the next one!

As technically minded as everyone is that helps makes it easier to get the website up and running on WordPress.  Then you tweak the code and install plugins to get the site looking and doing exactly like you want. You have an awesome WordPress based website and it needs the life blood of any site – content!

Your sitting there staring at your screen and waiting to have that idea come to you that will make the basis for the most awesome blog post ever. Where does that idea come from? 

How do you develop those ideas? What process do you use to decide what you will blog about this time?

If your running a technical blog then you might find easy idea targets that relate directly to that type of site.  For instance, this site is about WordPress and the tools available for it and you will find it hard to track down a post that is not at least remotely about WordPress in some way.

If your blogging about cooking, poetry, or whatever subject there will be a fairly clean flow of ideas – to a point – then your mind will be as blank as the screen in front of you.

In those moments – what do you do to find inspiration for that next blog post?

I think bloggers can suffer from writers block as much as any other writer can – I myself have experienced it in the past. It would be terrific to share amongst this community how you get past those points and find your inspiration.

I also believe the talent is out there amongst you to write a plugin for the community that builds on this post and lets bloggers create a list of ideas right in their WordPress admin for future reference and safe keeping until it is time to create that masterpiece of a blog entry.

So I would very much like to hear from you on how you bring together ideas for your blog posts, where do you store them until your ready to write, do you use any part of WordPress itself to keep a list in work for future posts? Looking forward to your comments and the discussion on this.

Stay Safe and update to WordPress version 2.8.2!