SoapLog

Background

Jekyll is a static site generator that's perfect for GitHub hosted blogs.

Jekyll-now makes it easier to create your Jekyll blog, by eliminating a lot of the up front setup.

SoapLog extends jekyll-now to create a version controlled soaping log/website.

• You don't need to touch the command line
• You don't need to install/configure ruby, rvm/rbenv, ruby gems ☺️
• You don't need to install runtime dependencies like markdown processors, Pygments, etc
• If you're on Windows, this will make setting up Jekyll a lot easier
• It's easy to try out, you can just delete your forked repository if you don't like it

In a few minutes you'll be set up with a minimal, responsive homebatch log giving you more time to spend on homebatching or coding or whatever.

If your not sold already, checkout a Live Demo.

Quick Start

SoapLog can be deployed as a Github Project page (your_github_username_or_organization_name.github.io/SoapLog) or as your User or Organization page (your_github_username_or_organization_name.github.io). To deploy as a Project page follow Step 1A. To deploy as a User or Organization page follow step 1B.

Step 0)

Fork this repository to your Github User or Organization account.

Step 1A) Deploy SoapLog as a Project Page

First, if you don't like the name SoapLog as your base URL then rename your repository to something you see more fitting.

Next delete the gh-pages branch.

Enter "/SoapLog" (or whatever you entered for the base URL) in the baseurl field of the _config.yml file.

Once you've committed the change to _config.yml, create the gh-pages branch again fresh off of the latest master!

Your Jekyll based homebatch log should be viewable now at your_github_username_or_organization_name.github.io/SoapLog (or whatever base URL you changed your repo name to be in place of SoapLog.

Step 1B) Deploy SoapLog as a User or Organization Page

Rename the repository to your_github_username_or_organization_name.github.io.

Your Jekyll based homebatch log should be viewable immediately at your_github_username_or_organization_name.github.io (if it's not, you can often force it to build by completing step 2.

Delete the gh-pages branch. You won't be needing it.

Step 2) Customize and view your site

Enter your site name, description, avatar and many other options by editing the _config.yml file. You can easily turn on Google Analytics tracking, Disqus commenting and social icons here too.

Making a change to _config.yml (or any file in your repository) will force GitHub Pages to rebuild your site with jekyll. Your rebuilt site will be viewable a few seconds later. If not give it a few more minutes as GitHub suggests and it'll appear soon or check your email for any build errors reported by Github.

There are 3 different ways that you can make changes to your blog's files:

1. Edit files within your new username.github.io repository in the browser at GitHub.com.
2. Use a third party GitHub content editor, like Prose by Development Seed. It's optimized for use with Jekyll making markdown editing, writing drafts, and uploading images really easy.
3. Clone down your repository and make updates locally, then push them to your GitHub repository.

Step 3) Publish your first batch

Edit /_posts/2015-12-23-honey-oatmeal.md to replace the default content and log your first blog batch. This Markdown Cheatsheet might come in handy.

Note that file (batch day) dates are formatted as yyyy-dd-mm.

You can add additional batchs in the browser on GitHub.com too! Just hit the + icon in /_posts/ to create new content. Just make sure to include the front-matter block at the top of each new blog batch and make sure the batch's filename is in this format: year-month-day-title.md

Local Development

1. Install Jekyll and plug-ins in one fell swoop. gem install github-pages This mirrors the plug-ins used by GitHub Pages on your local machine including Jekyll, Sass, etc.
2. Clone down your fork git clone git@github.com:yourusername/yourusername.github.io.git
3. Serve the site and watch for markup/sass changes jekyll serve
4. View your website at http://0.0.0.0:4000
5. Commit any changes and push everything to the master branch of your GitHub user repository. GitHub Pages will then rebuild and serve your website.

Features

✓ Command-line free fork-first workflow, using GitHub.com to create, customize and publicly log your homebatchs
✓ Fully responsive and mobile optimized base theme (Live Demo)
✓ Customized homebatching theme (with version control!)
✓ Sass/Coffeescript support using Jekyll 2.0
✓ Free hosting on your GitHub Pages user site
✓ Markdown blogging
✓ Syntax highlighting
✓ Disqus commenting
✓ Google Analytics integration
✓ SVG social icons for your footer
✓ 3 http requests, including your avatar
✓ More time to batch/code other things...

✘ No installing dependencies
✘ No need to set up local development
✘ No configuring plugins
✘ No need to spend time on themes