Publishing without a connection: paste and import guides

A connection is not required to publish an article Serpio wrote. The Export article dialog has a Platform guide with steps and a recommended format for more than twenty platforms. This guide walks through them by group. For how the dialog itself works, read Guided exports.

• Run checks first. Export requires a passing quality report for the current revision.
• Open the article, click Export, and pick the platform under Platform guide. Serpio selects the recommended method and shows the How to post steps.
• Keep the article's title, SEO description, slug, and keywords to hand. They are in the right rail under Search appearance. No paste carries them for you.

Visual editors: blogs, site builders, and newsletters

For these platforms the recommended method is Copy formatted article. It copies the body as rich text, so headings, links, lists, and tables arrive intact in any editor that accepts an HTML paste. This is also the route for WordPress, Ghost, or Blogger when you prefer not to connect them.

1. 1

   Create the post as a draft in the destination

   Do not publish yet.

2. 2

   Copy and paste the body

   Click Copy formatted article, click into the destination's body field, and paste. Check that headings kept their levels and that links are still links. If everything arrived as one block of plain text, the editor does not accept HTML pastes; use Download HTML fragment and its source view instead.

3. 3

   Fill the fields the paste cannot carry

   Title, slug or URL, excerpt or subtitle, SEO title and description, tags or topics, and the featured or cover image. The How to post steps list them in the destination's own order.

4. 4

   Add the hero image

   Use Download package and take the hero file from the zip, or download the image from the article workspace. Set the alt text from the article's Image alt text field.

5. 5

   Set the canonical URL only if the article has one

   Medium and DEV let you declare a canonical source. Leave it blank unless the article already lives at another URL.

6. 6

   Preview, then publish or schedule in the destination

   Newsletter tools such as Substack and beehiiv offer a test send. Use it before the real one.

DEV and other Forem sites

DEV's editor is Markdown-first, so the recommended method is Download body Markdown. The file has no frontmatter to strip.

1. 1

   Create a new post and switch to the Markdown editor

2. 2

   Paste the file contents into the body

   Open the downloaded .md file in any text editor, select all, and paste.

3. 3

   Set title, description, tags, cover image, and canonical URL

   DEV allows four tags. If you leave the canonical URL blank, DEV assigns its own.

4. 4

   Save as a draft and preview

   Publish from DEV when the preview looks right.

HTML-source CMSs: Drupal and Joomla

When the editor has an HTML or source view, use Download HTML fragment. It contains only the body markup, with no page wrapper and no styles, so your theme stays in charge.

1. 1

   Create the content item

   Drupal: Content, Add content, then Article or your post type. Joomla: Content, Articles, then New.

2. 2

   Switch the body to an HTML-capable format or the code view, then paste the fragment

3. 3

   Map the remaining fields

   Title, summary, URL alias, taxonomy or tags, metadata, and the image.

4. 4

   Preview, then save as unpublished first

Headless CMSs

Contentful, Sanity, Strapi, Prismic, and Contentstack all recommend Download JSON. The file holds metadata for the scalar fields and three body representations under content: html, markdown, and portable, a block tree you can translate into your own rich-text schema.

1. 1

   Create an entry or document with your article content type

2. 2

   Map the metadata fields

   Title, slug, summary or excerpt, SEO title and description, author, tags, canonical URL, and publication date.

3. 3

   Choose one body representation

   Use content.html or content.markdown when the body is a single text field. Use content.portable when you need structured blocks.

4. 4

   Upload the hero from the package

   metadata.heroImage gives you the URL and alt text. The Content package zip gives you the file itself for an asset field.

5. 5

   Validate through your frontend preview before publishing the entry

Static site generators

These frameworks are not in the Platform guide list. Their files sit under Advanced and developer formats. Each download is a Markdown or MDX file with frontmatter tuned to the framework.

The image or heroImage value is a URL on Serpio's host. To keep the image in your repository, copy the hero file from the Content package into your assets directory and update the path. Run the local build before committing.

Anything else: the content package

If the destination is not listed, Download package gives you every representation at once: a standalone article.html, article.md with frontmatter, body.html, body.md, article.json, the hero image, and a README.md with the steps. Open the destination, create a post, import the closest supported file, verify the preview, and publish there.

Check the result and close the loop

1. 1

   Check the live page

   Hero image present with alt text, heading levels intact, internal links pointing at your own domain, canonical URL correct or absent.

2. 2

   Add the live URL in Serpio

   In Publishing history, find the Exported entry, paste the URL under Published it manually?, and click Add live URL. The entry changes to Live and the article is marked as sent.