This is a simple app that I built with Apple Automator that I’ve been using to upload files to this blog. Overall, WordPress’s web page uploader works well, but it requires a browser window be open. Sometimes I just want to send a file quickly and not bother with that. One of the reasons people like my Post to WordPress plugin for Ulysses is that it avoids having to open up WordPress to save a draft post.

One major advantage WordPress’s web page uploader has is that it will preserve captions on photos. This is just a utility to send a file without having to open the browser.

Installation is simple. Just download the .zip file from Github and then unzip it and then also unzip the app file. (The app has to be zipped or it won’t survive the roundtrip from GitHub.) Then move it to a convenient location like ~/Applications in your home folder. Once that’s done, all that’s left is to setup the config file.

The config file is a plain text file that contains the password and other information about your blog. Edit the included wp-upload-password.json file to match the login information to your blog.

It’s a basic JSON file that contains the following placeholders:

• yourBlogURL.com: The blog's domain name. For a WordPress.com blog use the yourblog.wordpress.com address even if you have a custom domain for it.
• blogPassword: The password for the blog.
• blogUsername: The user you use for the blog.
• useSSL: If you're not using SSL security on your blog (not recommended) change this to false. WordPress.com blogs are SSL-enabled by default.

Once that’s done copy the file to your home folder and rename it to .wp-upload-password.json. You can do this with the following terminal command

cp wp-upload-password.json ~/.wp-upload-password.json

Or if you move it with the Finder, make sure to add the dot at the beginning.

As a bonus for anyone using my Post to WordPress from Ulysses app, there’s no need to create a new password file, It’ll use the .ulysses-wp-password.json file you already have.

Once everything’s installed simply drag a file to the app icon, and it’ll be automatically uploaded to your blog. Easy peasy!

Once the file is uploaded you’ll see a success message in your notifications. On the off chance something went wrong, the notification will contain the error message.