Email to blog post

How it works

1. 1

   Forward the email to your ForwardThis address with some simple instructions, like "turn this into a draft post on the blog titled Autumn opening hours".

2. 2

   The email's own text becomes the body of a new draft, under the title asked for. It is a draft and only a draft: nothing appears on the site, nobody is emailed about it, and no subscriber hears anything. In Ghost the same forward can draft a page rather than a post, and in Webflow the draft is a new item in the blog collection.

3. 3

   Publishing is a separate ask, and it always waits for your yes, because that is the moment strangers can read it. Scheduling counts as publishing, so it waits too.

4. 4

   You receive a confirmation email containing a link to the draft, plus an undo button if something doesn't look right.

FAQs

How do I turn an email into a blog post?

Forward the email to your ForwardThis address with some simple instructions, like "turn this into a draft post on the blog titled Autumn opening hours". ForwardThis writes the draft on your site and replies with a link to it. The first time, you will need a free ForwardThis account with WordPress.com, Ghost or Webflow connected - it takes about 30 seconds.

Which blogging platforms does this work with?

WordPress.com, Ghost and Webflow. The forward is the same in each, and the reply links straight to the draft. Self-hosted WordPress is the gap: it uses a different connection, which is not available yet, so a site you run on your own server is not covered.

Will it publish the post?

No. Every post arrives as a draft, and putting one live is a separate instruction that ForwardThis shows you before it acts on it. The same goes for editing a post that already exists and for scheduling one, since a scheduled post is a published post with a date on it. Ghost is worth knowing about here: publishing in Ghost can email the members list, and ForwardThis never publishes with a newsletter attached, so nobody is mailed either way.

Can it set the title, the tags and the categories?

The title always, from your instructions. Tags and categories depend on the site. WordPress takes both, and it creates a name that does not exist yet, though a post has to keep at least one category so they cannot all be stripped off. Ghost only takes tags that already exist and refuses a new one, because a new Ghost tag also creates a public archive page nobody asked for. Webflow has no tags of its own: the draft item takes whatever fields the blog collection defines.

How does this work on a Webflow site?

A Webflow blog is a CMS collection, so the post arrives as a new item in that collection, created as a draft. Nothing shows on the live site until the item is published, and that is a separate ask. Publishing one item can be reversed by unpublishing it. Publishing the whole site cannot, and it pushes every staged change including other people's, so ForwardThis treats that as its own decision and shows it to you.

Can it use a picture from the email?

On WordPress, yes. An image attached to the forward goes into the site's media library, and it can be set as the post's featured image. Ghost and Webflow have no such connection yet, so on those two the attachment stays out and the post is text.

Will the post come out properly laid out?

It comes out as the email's text under your title, which is right for an announcement, a set of notes or a piece somebody has already written for you. It is not a substitute for the editor: pull quotes, headings, image placement and anything that needs to look designed are still yours to do, and the draft is sitting there waiting for exactly that.

What happens to my email afterwards?

It gets deleted. ForwardThis holds your email briefly in case you press undo, then removes it completely. Nothing is stored long term.