Workflow, or How I Make this Blog
Purpose
I received an email from someone that wanted to know how I constructed my website and what my workflow looks like. And, in drafting my response, I realized I may as well make it public in case others are interested.
Creation
I use Jekyll, a static site generator with built-in support for Github Pages. I first started with the basic Jekyll repo, but wanted a more interesting look. So I found a Jekyll theme I liked and forked the repo for it. I named it <github-username>.github.io>, and then cloned it. I followed the included README for configuring my version. I modified the color scheme, replaced the background, added new icons, and changed and added some default page tabs, and I updated the _config.yml file. I also added a custom domain for my Github Pages site. At this point, the blog was ready to go.
Adding Posts
All the posts are expected in Kramdown, the default Markdown renderer for Jekyll. The files that contain the posts must be written in this format and include a header in the following format:
---
layout: post
title: <your-title>
---
Also note, that if you want to use a colon in your title you have to use the character code : to get it to render.
The posts also have to be titled in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD-<title>.md, where <title> can include dashes. Then, those files need to be placed inside the _posts folder.
Workflow
I wrote two simple scripts to make this process faster.
title.sh:
#!/bin/bash
echo "---
layout: post
title: $2
---
$(cat $1)" > $1
The first argument is the filename and the second argument is the title which is usually put in quotes.
post.sh:
#!/bin/bash
filename=`echo "$1" | cut -d '.' -f1`
mypost="$(date +%Y-%m-%d)-$filename.md"
echo "$1 --> /_posts/$mypost"
mv $1 ~/<url>/_posts/$mypost
For this one, simply pass the filename as the first argument. It renames the post with the date and moves it into the _posts folder.
Running Locally
To check that everything looks as it should, I run jekyll serve in the root directory of my repo. The page is then served on localhost:4000 by default.
Updating Live Site
Pushing changes to the site is fairly simple with Git.
$ cd <username>.github.io
$ git add _posts/*
$ git commit -m "<hopefully descriptive message>"
$ git push