Notetaking (again). WordPress!

I love to write something, using computer or mobile. Then I found the Google Keep, which is wonderful because it is a web app, works on Linux and Android. Storing my notes in the cloud so that I need not to worry about synchronization problem.

I am not fan of Evernote, but Evernote is a very popular notetaking application. I doesn’t like it because (i) it does not have Linux native support, (ii) and the free plan has quite a lot of limitations. However, I am using it. I was using Zotero. Zotero is nice in terms of the service, but it does not have nice user interface, such as note editing, which affects the user experience. In terms of reference management, Mendeley works far more better than Zotero. As a result, I choose Mendeley for reference management, and choose Evernote for the sake of Evernote Web Clipper extension. The nice feature of Evernote that attracts me is the web clipper. I can highlight the text I want, and save to Evernote. Evernote will store the date, time, and URL. I can also screenshot the web page too. This is what I like most. (May be I should try OneNote as well. I also just found that there is Save to Google Drive extension.)

Now, I have Google Keep and Evernote. But I still feels lack of something. The problem is like this, Evernote is nice, but with the limitations that I mentioned above. As a result, I don’t put all my notes in Evernote, but only favourite quotes from Internet. Then, I use Google Keep to store my general notes. Google Keep is nice in terms of (i) lightweight, (ii) search feature, and (iii) cross-platform because it is a web app. However, recently I found that, browsing notes in Google Keep is not nice. Though you can use the tags feature, but what will happen if you have hundreds of tags? And, if you have thousands of notes, and you want to browse through the notes instead of search the notes, you needs to keep scrolling down. This is some how inefficient. Another problem I faced in Google Keep is the date, it shows only the date of editing, but not the date of creating. That means, I cannot keep track when I create the note, unless I wrote the date explicitly in the note. As a result, I decided not to put all my notes in Google Keep as well. Then, what service should I use?

As a conclusion, I want something

  1. can store the general notes
  2. cross-platform or web app that can works on mobile and desktop (or laptop)
  3. can browse the notes freely
  4. stores the note privately

Finally, I decided to use WordPress. Yes! WordPress. Use it as a private journal. Disable all the publishing and SEO configurations. It is web-based, works on any computer as long as you have web browser. It provides mobile app, you can save draft locally on your mobile. It keeps track date and time. You can search the posts by keywords that you remember. You can categorise the posts or adding the tags. One and the only thing that it lacks of is the web clipper. But, it comes with other great features. WordPress.com provides free plan, which is good enough for general purpose. You can pay for better service with paid plans. And, If you don’t like WordPress.com, you can subscribe a PHP web hosting service, then host your own WordPress app. You can export and import the WordPress articles easily. That means, you are not restricted to a paid service that you cannot work on your notes freely and do whatever you like.