This blog was created using the Octopress blogging framework. I tell you this for several reasons:

1. Because one should give credit for other people’s work.
2. Expect the site to change as I learn how to modify it.
3. Expect the site to break as I learn how to modify it.

The first major hurdle I had, and I suspect my fellow aspiring Web-Belt Jrs had it as well, was getting the blog to deploy using the Github Pages hosting service.

The Octopress documentation does cover this process, but the workflow for the newly minted web-dev can be a bit overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff happening with git at the command line that may seem unfamiliar. Having said that I’ll throw my $0.02 worth of advice into the ring, and see if I can’t make it easier for anyone reading this.

Set up your username.github.io repo

Go to your github home page and click on the button labeled “New Repository” on the right side of the screen.

On the next page enter the name of the repo, in the form username.github.io where username is YOUR github user ID.

Enter an optional description if you wish and click on the green “Create Repository” button.

The next page will show you the setup for your repo, and the repo name. Make sure that the SSH button is selected and copy the address in the box to your clipboard, you will need it for the next step. It will be in the form git@github.com:username/username.github.io.git

Note: It can take github several minutes to setup your username.git.io page. If you get a 404 error, just go do something else for a little while, and then come back and try again.

Set up your Octopress code base to deploy to github.io

Switch to your terminal program and cd into your octopress directory, and then run the rake setup_github_pages

For my fellow DaVinci Coder’s that would be:

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cd ~/workspace/octopress
rake setup_github_pages

It will ask you for the repo name you copied in the last step. Enter it and continue. When the rake job is finished your local repository will have been set up via series of git commands to push your blog code to your username.github.io page.

The next step is to actually publish the blog.

Workflow for publishing your blog entries

The workflow goes like this:

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rake new_post["title"]    # Create a new post.
rake generate             # Generate your blog.
rake deploy               # Deploy (duh!) your blog.

When you deploy you will see a lot of code go scrolling up the screen. This is git committing and pushing the _deploy folder to the master branch of your repo.

Go check out your published blog at: username.github.io.

Also, don’t forget to commit and save your changes, using the standard git workflow:

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git add .
git commit -m 'your message'
git push origin source

Just repeat the process to add new posts and publish them.

For more detail on the process see the first link, and for direction in automating the workflow even further see the second link.

From Octopress: Deploying to Github Pages

From Kevin van Zonneveld: Blog with Octopress and Github pages

Thanx for reading. Stay tuned for more from the front lines…