Using Github for Blogging
It’s 2021 and I’m tired of all the fancy stuff…
I have my website at stuartelimu.me which runs on ghost. I also modified the ghost theme to my own whihc you can fork and use if you don’t mind. I really love ghost, it comes with a rich editor which I can use to write using markdown ( which is my favorite ) and notion like editor.
Unfortunately, I always have to log in to write and edit my post, it doesn’t seem like an overhead but after publishing over 8 posts and my domain being deactivated. i stopped writing and my goal for a post each week last year was crushed.
Jekyll: A second chance
I spend a lot of time on github especially the terminal and web interface. Github has github pages as well as a special repo which you can use to host your site.
When I first tried out this feature, I was going throguh github class room until I found jekyll. I did read about it and unfortunately I was required to install ruby and run all these build commands etc I really wasn’t into any of that and so I left only one page and dropped the whole idea.
First forward, Github released the README project which for most people eliminated the need for a fancy portfolio site and I came across articles on how to autmate the update.
I thought I would write a script that would convert a couple of read me files and add them to my single readme in my special repository. I did a basic copy and paste without understanding what was going on and obviously I failed terribly and again I failed at it.
Later I started to experiment if I could write some md files and access them using paths like a normal website. I succeeded at this and I wrote a couple of files including this one; well it was a bit of a draft
But it was exactly what I needed. I wanted to write without any installation, i wanted to use markdown and also have a hassle free way to sign in and edit my posts on the go.
On further a do, I found out github uses jekyll to serve github pages and I cringed, i thought I was going back in circles.
I wanted to customize my homepage which was a readme file and remove the top header but i failed. on more research I found this article that really made everything make sense. I did just that and since I am firmiliar with base or default templates this was a great space. I managed to make an edit and some github actions ran behind the scenes and nice i had my own custom header.
i wanted something really minimalisist and fast to use with some motivation from js, mdo and other writer who stick to the point but keep it simple
Once I realized I could edit and create new posts it was great. I studied the default primer theme and also went through the jekyll documentaton
Well, i didn’t want anyone to tell me how to number my posts but I also needed a semi automatic way to create slugs to my posts but arguably I decided to build on top of this and started my blog here.
I’m an explorer so I keep contemplating on various platforms but this by far is one of the frictionless ways I have found to keep my writing habbits.
Have you tried to use jekyll like most of the internet? What static site builders are you using ?