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:
- Edit files within your new username.github.io repository in the browser at GitHub.com.
- 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.
- 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
- 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. - Clone down your fork
git clone git@github.com:yourusername/yourusername.github.io.git
- Serve the site and watch for markup/sass changes
jekyll serve
- View your website at http://0.0.0.0:4000
- 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