Blog

The Blog module is your date-sorted feed — articles, updates, announcements, whatever you want to share.

Anatomy of a Blog Post

Title
The filename of the note. You'll be asked for it when creating a post via the plugin commands.
Description
A short summary set in the description field of the frontmatter. It doesn't appear in the post body itself, but it shows up everywhere else: in the list of posts on your site, in search engine results, and in social media previews when someone shares your link. A good description makes your publication look polished and helps readers decide whether to click through — don't skip it!
Cover
An optional image is displayed at the top of the post, in post listings, and used as an OG image. Can be a vault image or an external URL. Although we highly recommend using internal images. Use Draftist: Set cover image command to set it, with optional credit text and link for attribution.
Body
Everything below the frontmatter. See the Content section for formatting, images, code blocks, and other supported elements.

Post Lifecycle

Every post has a status in its frontmatter. Before a post goes live, this is mostly for organizing your writing workflow. After a post goes live, its public status is managed on Draftist and pulled back to Obsidian.

Idea — early stage; basically, a TO-DO
Draft — work in progress, can be previewed on your site but not visible to readers
Published — live on your site
Unpublished — taken offline because it needs more work; publish it again when ready
Archived — taken offline because it is no longer relevant; unarchive it if needed
Deleted — in trash on Draftist, scheduled for deletion; restore it or delete it permanently. If the post was permanently deleted on Draftist, the local note keeps status: Deleted but its Draftist metadata is removed.

Before a post has ever gone live, you can move between Idea and Draft by changing the status field. Once a post has gone live, manage its status on Draftist — use the dedicated toolbar on the preview site. To get there, run Draftist: Manage on Draftist command. The plugin pulls the live status back to Obsidian and moves the file to the matching folder.

Unpublished and Archived are both offline, but they mean different things. Use Unpublished when something went live too soon and still needs work. Use Archived when the content is no longer relevant and is expected to stay out of the live site.

Folder Structure

With the "Manage site folders" automation enabled, the plugin organizes posts by status:

My Website/
└── Blog/
    ├── Ideas/
    │   └── Post Title/
    ├── Drafts/
    │   └── Post Title/
    ├── Published/
    │   └── 2025-12-19 - Post Title/
    ├── Unpublished/
    │   └── 2025-12-19 - Post Title/
    ├── Archive/
    │   └── 2025-06-01 - Post Title/
    ├── Trash/
    │   └── 2025-12-19 - Post Title/
    └── Deleted/
        └── 2025-12-19 - Post Title/

Posts with a posted on date get a date prefix in their folder name so they sort nicely. Unpublished posts stay separate from archived posts, so content that still needs action doesn't get mixed with the archive. Posts in Draftist trash go in Trash/; notes whose Draftist content was permanently deleted go in Deleted/. The Blog folder name matches the module name in your site settings.

Each post lives in its own folder — the markdown file and all its assets are kept together:

Post Title/
├── Post Title.md
└── images/
    ├── cover-hero.a1b2c3d4.jpg
    ├── post-diagram.e5f6g7h8.png
    └── ...

Creating a Post

Open the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and run one of:

Draftist: Create new blog post idea — creates a post with Idea status
Draftist: Create new blog post draft — creates a post with Draft status

The plugin asks for a title and description, then creates a note with pre-filled frontmatter.

Adding Images

Cover image — run Draftist: Set cover image to pick a vault image or paste an external URL. You can optionally add credit text and a link for attribution. The cover appears at the top of the post, in post listings, and is used as an OG image.
Inline images — embed images directly in your post body. See Images for details.
Galleries — display a collection of images in a grid layout. See Galleries for details.

All images are stored in the post's images/ subfolder — the plugin handles this automatically when you add assets via the provided commands. If you've added images manually or they ended up outside the images/ folder, run Draftist: Normalize images command to reorganize them into the correct location with consistent filenames.

Frontmatter

Here are the frontmatter fields the plugin manages:

Field	Description
`status`	Post lifecycle stage: `Idea`, `Draft`, `Published`, `Unpublished`, `Archived`, or `Deleted`
`description`	Short excerpt shown in post listings and SEO meta tags
`posted on`	Publication date (`YYYY-MM-DD`). Auto-assigned on first publish if not set.
`cover`	Cover image filename or external URL
`cover credit text`	Attribution text for the cover image
`cover credit link`	Attribution link for the cover image
`slug`	Custom URL slug. Auto-generated from the title if not set.
`tags`	List of tags

If you created a note manually or its frontmatter looks out of order, run Draftist: Normalize frontmatter. It sorts all properties into a consistent order and adds any missing fields.

The plugin also stores internal metadata in fields prefixed with [draftist]. These are hidden by default — you'll only see them if you enable "Expose internal metadata" in the plugin's debugging settings. Don't edit them manually — changing these values can corrupt the plugin's metadata state and cause publishing issues.

Publishing

When you're ready, run Draftist: Preview and publish command. The plugin saves a draft version of your post and opens it in your browser on your site's preview domain. Use the toolbar in that preview to publish the post or manage its availability.

If you use other third-party Obsidian plugins, the Obsidian team recommends using your primary browser for sensitive tasks and websites that require login instead of the web viewer for security reasons.

During publishing, the plugin adds block ID markers (like ^a1b2c3) to every block in your post. We know they can be a bit noisy, but they power useful features: readers and other posts can link directly to a specific paragraph or heading, they enable automatic table of contents generation, and the server can diff changes between versions to show exactly what was updated. You can adjust their opacity or disable them entirely in the plugin settings — though we recommend keeping them on.

If the post links to content that is not published, Draftist warns you before publishing. You can publish anyway, but those links will be broken until the linked content is published.

When unpublishing, archiving, or deleting a post, Draftist warns you if live content links to it.

After publishing or changing availability, when you return to the note, the plugin pulls the post's status and publication date back from your site. If you published a Draft, the status field updates to Published and a posted on date is filled in if it wasn't already set — which also triggers the folder automation, moving your post to the matching folder. If Draftist reports that the post no longer exists, the plugin removes local Draftist metadata and image metadata sidecars, keeps status: Deleted, and moves the note to Deleted/.