As a Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager (MEMCM / MECM/ SCCM / CM) / Intune admin, what do I have to do with WordPress plugins? Well, the answer might surprise you. My new favorite WordPress plugin help me solve a problem that has long plagued me!
I write all of my blog in Microsoft Word, then I send them off to my editor who “fixes” all my grammar, spelling, etc. and helps with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO), then she would upload them to WordPress via a magical process. Which involved a lot of editing Word meta data from a post. Well, that is how it used to happen when I worked at Enhansoft, Now it is back to just me on my “new” personal site.
So, I’m restarting my personal blog site and you will see “lots” of changes coming to the site in the next few “weeks” but it now means that I need to do the “magic” process to edit a lot of the meta data from the word doc before it get published on https://askgarth.com/
The process of create a blog is as follows:
- Come up with an idea or have a problem to solve
- Create a blog within Word
- Edit the blog for grammar, spelling, etc. (currently skipping this step)
- Make sure I hit the basic SEO items, (define a keyword, image, etc. again currently skipping this step)
- Then copy and paste the entire word doc into a WordPress post
- Upload the images to the media library
- Add the all the images within the post
- Shudder if I actually looked the HTML code and the random links.
- Try ways to clean up the html code
- Sometime copy the word doc test to Notepad! (Wally would be so proud!) and do steps 5-7 again.
- Review it one more time
- Schedule article/blog for a later date.
The Problems
Let me show you the problems with this process:
Above is a screenshot showing the word doc for the blog How to Create a Computer Start Up GPO. There are two things that I want you to notice first look at the subheaders (yellow arrow), notice how both are the same color and style) next notice the red arrow and how the image is there.
Now let’s look at the WordPress site after coping and pasting from Word. Why did the headers change colour and style (yellow arrow)? Notice image is missing (red arrow) and notice that the whole paragraph has also changed colour and styles (Green arrow it was not shown in the first screenshot). This is the random issue that crop up when you copy and paste directly from word.
My New Favorite WordPress Plugin
Because I’m now doing everything myself, I went looking for a plugin to see if there was anything that would allow me to convert / import Word docs better. And there is.
I searched for Word converter and found Mammoth .Docx converter, I installed it and tried it out. I have to say it does what it says it will do! And it is easy to use too!
How to use Mammoth?
Create a new post. Scroll to the bottom, Expand the Mammoth .Docx converter section (Purple arrow), click the Choose File button (blue arrow).
Select the word doc and click Open.
You can preview the blog post. What is hard to see in this screenshot without scrolling is that all images are there and all text looked “exactly” like the Word doc!. Click Insert into Editor button (yellow arrow) and wait.
It is a bit hard to see but it say Inserting… depending on the doc size it might take a minute to complete but it will show within the WP editor when it is done.
What is left to do/fix?
There are two things that you “might” to fix.
Fist the Title is NOT automatic added at the blog title. Copy and past (blue arrow) that to the Title section (purple arrow).
The second one is more about SEO and how lazy you are! By default, any image within the docs will file name of something like word-image-22766-2.png. this of course is bad from an SEO stand point!
However, if enter the Alt text on an image (and we all should to help our visually impaired friends) Mammoth will use the alt text for the image names! That is super cool!
If you are looking to blog and follow a similar process, I encourage you to check out mammoth and support the author too. I hope My New Favorite WordPress Plugin will become yours too! If you have any questions, please feel free to touch base with me @Garthmj.