Automating Your Publishing Pipeline with Scripts and Cron Jobs

Repetition is a bug

If you perform the same publishing steps every week, they belong in a script. The goal is not to remove the human from writing, but to remove the human from the mechanics around writing.

Pipeline stages

1. Markdown draft lands in a folder.
2. Script validates front matter and generates an excerpt.
3. Images are resized and converted to WebP.
4. Cron job publishes the post at the scheduled time.
5. Teaser text is pushed to your social accounts.

Failure alerts

Every job should be allowed to fail loudly - a short email or message when a step breaks saves you from publishing nothing for a week.