Roel Willems

Micro guides

    How to batch export from Ulysses to plain Markdown

    This is a small guide to help moving files from Ulysses native file format (.ulysses files) to plain Markdown. Having your writing in plain Markdown is necessary when you want to move to a different writing app or just for backup purposes1.

    This guide works for files without images and Ulysses specific bells and whistles

    1. Create a temporary folder on your Mac for the exported Markdown files e.g. “Ulysses export”;
    2. Open Ulysses on your Mac and add the “Ulysses export” folder to the library (bottom of the left sidebar) → Add External Folder;
    3. Select the files you would like to export from Ulysses to standard Markdown;
    4. Move the files, within Ulysses, to the “Ulysses export” folder;
    5. Open the “Ulysses export” folder in the Finder and move/import to where ever you would like.

    1. Just trying to backup the .ulysses files isn’t very useful as the .ulysses files have a hash for a name and contain two files (Content.xml and Text.txt). To get your writing out of the files you have to open all of them manually. If you use an iCloud-stored library the files are hardly reachable at all. ↩︎

    Micro guide: Getting your hosted Microblog IPv6 ready

    This is a small guide (hence the category “micro guide”) to enable IPv61 for your hosted microblog2.

    disclaimer: please make sure that you know what you are doing with your DNS settings. Although it isn’t really difficult or complex you can really mess up access to your website if the settings are incorrect. Please make note of the original settings before changing anything.

    Setting up IPv6

    To start, you should go to your domain registrar or system to manage DNS (personally I use Cloudflare and have written another micro guide with recommendations on how-to enable Cloudflare for your microblog).

    Now you can create an AAAA record (a record is an instruction for the browser to which server to connect and the AAAA version is used for IPv6 addresses).

    Make sure that the AAAA record is pointing to:

    2600:3c00:1::68c8:16d6

    This is the IPv6 address for hosted microblogs. Leave the A record (address for IPv4) and other records like CNAME unaltered. Based on you DNS provider it should look somewhat like:

    example of DNS records

    Save the settings and after a few minutes you can check if your website has support for IPv6.

    1. What IPv6 is and why it is beneficial will get technical very quickly, if your interested you could start reading Wikipedia or look in to this tutorial ↩︎

    2. hosted with micro.blog ↩︎

    Micro guide: Additional steps and recommendations when using Cloudflare for your DNS

    Cloudflare users wanting to use a custom domain name for their hosted Micro.blog will be greeted by a “custom domain isn't pointing to the micro.blog" error message when trying to save the custom domain.

    Luckily there is a work around:

    How to get your custom domain working with Cloudflare

    1. First follow the steps as outlined above and add the proper “A” and/or “CNAME” records to the Cloudflare DNS panel;
    2. Before adding the custom domain to your Micro.blog account make sure that the “DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN)” (orange cloud-icon) is disabled and set to bypass (grey cloud icon with the hover text “DNS only”);
    3. After updating your DNS records and Cloudflare set to bypass for the “A” record and/or “CNAME” go to “Account” on Micro.blog and fill hostname (e.g. yourdomain.com) that you’d like to use for your Micro.blog;
    4. Micro.blog should save and enable to custom domain without issues. If you get a message “custom domain isn’t pointing to the micro.blog" make sure that you have set Cloudflare on bypass and wait for a few more minutes (the DNS change can take some time to get in effect);
    5. After successful saving the custom domain you can re-enable Cloudflare functionality on your domain/Micro.blog by remove the bypass, make sure that the cloud-icon is set to orange (hover text should state: “DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN)”).

    So there you have it, you are able to use Cloudflare (DNS/CDN/security/caching/DDOS protection) with hosted Micro.blogs, with some additional steps to get the initial setup working.

    Some additional recommendations:

    Using Cloudflare to redirect www. to root domain

    If you would like to enable www. and root version of your custom domain it’s advisable to redirect one to the other (to make sure that there isn’t any duplicated content). Cloudflare can redirect the www. version to the root domain:

    1. Go to “Page rules” within your Cloudflare account;
    2. Create a page rule;
    3. Add <www.yourdomain.com>/* within the first field (“If the URL matches”);
    4. Under “Then the settings are:” select “Forwarding URL”, “ 301 - Permanent redirect”;
    5. Add: <yourdomain.com>/$1 to the destination URL field;
    6. Save and deploy the page rule for the redirect to take effect.

    Cloudflare, SSL and your Micro.blog

    You should not use the SSL functionality provided by Cloudflare (email help@micro.blog to enable SSL).

    Micro Guides: small articles which can be of great help

    Yesterday I had the opportunity to help someone from the Micro.blog community by writing a tiny post.

    This sparked an idea: Micro guides, small articles about any subject you think could be of help or interest to the Microblogging community (for instance on writing, podcasting1, blog design or any other subject you think could be of help).

    I will certainly start to share more short articles on my journey to writing more often and possibly on Micro.blog tech stuff if I run in to it.

    The open web is build together, feel free to share (who knows how many people you could help!)

    1. I already learned a lot about podcasting from the people I follow. ↩︎

    Micro Guide: Changing the default colors of the Micro.blog Marfa theme

    I switched my theme for this microblog to Marfa.

    Marfa is a new theme for Micro.blog hosted websites. I really like the theme but wanted to give it a small personal touch by changing the default color for links.

    Changing the defaults (light red/pink-ish) is quite easy. Using the edit CSS functionality of Micro.blog you can overwrite the default colors by pasting the code above and change the colors to your liking.

    nav.main-nav a.cta {
	background: #fff;
	color: #ee4792;
	border: 2px solid #fcdae9;
}

nav.main-nav a.cta:hover {
	background: #fcdae9;
	color: #ee4792;
}

nav.main-nav a, #footer a, #post-nav a, p a{
   box-shadow: inset 0 -2px 0 #fcdae9;
}

nav.main-nav a:hover, #footer a:hover, #post-nav a:hover, p a:hover {
	box-shadow: inset 0 -25px 0 #fcdae9;
}

    #fcdae9 is for underline and shading of the links. The #ee4792 color is for the “Also on Micro.blog” text in the upper right button.