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I think the pleasure of doing something like this is in the pure tinkering. Setting up the system just like you want it is kind-of fun. There's some value in that.

If I already considered plain text for writing, I would rather start with a flat file system like Grav[1] or Pico CMS[2] that's based on markdown files, than trying to get the content out of a wordpress db later. Given, WP is at this point the standard to publish online and it's quick and easy.

[1]: https://getgrav.org/ [2]: http://picocms.org/

Depending on the content you are trying to do, different formats help. For me, the few times I get around to writing a blog post, I'm also writing some code to play with. In that, org has been amazingly fun. http://taeric.github.io/Sudoku.html is an example. All of the code and blog material is in one source and I don't have to worry about changing excerpts to put on the page. Literally change the code and rerun.

Markup also matters. With good markup and design the content can be more inviting. I think everyone should learn some basic HTML and CSS. Standard formatting is boring.