Octopress

Some notes on setting up Octopress to work with GitHub pages.

You, too, can have a glamorous GitHub page like mine! http://charlesreid1.github.io/

Octopress Deploy Process

If you already have an Octopress set up (like me!), you can clone a copy on your second computer, and be ready to blog, by following these steps:

1. Clone your repository

git clone https://github.com/charlesreid1/charlesreid1.github.io

2. Check out the source branch

cd charlesreid1.github.io/
git checkout source
cd ../

3. Check out the deploy branch into _deploy:

cd charlesreid1.github.io/
git clone https://github.com/charlesreid1/charlesreid1.github.io _deploy

4. Make sure it is the master branch (i.e., the live changes you'll see on http://charlesreid1.github.io):

cd _deploy
git checkout master

5. Make new posts and things by running rake commands:

bundle exec rake new_post['This is a new post title']

6. Commit your new posts to your source branch by running git commit on your newly-written blog posts.

Setting Up Octopress with Github Personal Page

You can create a repository that hosts static web content and is available at http://username.github.io - and you can use Octopress to deploy the static content from your markdown files.

This whole procedure gets a little lengthy, but my entire procedure is covered here:

Octopress/Octopress with Github Personal Pages

Setting Up Octopress with Github Project Pages

We saw above that Octopress enables you to set up an Octopress directory to work with a Github personal page repository.

But we may also want to set up Octopress for a project page repository - so that we can keep static web content relevant to the project that consists of a project blog and a set of project pages.

Octopress/Octopress with Github Project Pages

Adding Non-Blog Content to Octopress

What if I wanna add an "about me" page? Then I can use the rake new_page command. See this page for details:

Octopress/Adding Non-Blog Content

Octopress Blogging Workflow with 2 Computers

This is a description of my Octopress blogging workflow with 2 computers.

Octopress/Octopress Workflow

Modifying/Deleting Old Posts

Sometimes, you accidentally post your password to your blog, and you gotta clean up after your mess. So how do you do that?

Okay, this one is actually so easy that it doesn't even need its own page: you just modify or delete the markdown files.

It's that simple.

The next time you run rake generate, Octopress will be re-creating all the site's content from scratch, so no markdown files will be "missing" or "renamed". Octopress doesn't care who moved its cheese.

Octopress with Latex Math

Let's say you want to get Latex working with Octopress.

Bing! Done. Here you go.

Octopress/Octopress with Latex

Octopress with iframes

There's an Octopress plugin that allows you to embed iframe elements into an Octopress post using Liquid templates in your markdown.

This allows you to do some really handy stuff, like embed D3, Spotify playlists, or Flickr slideshows into Octopress blogs.

More info here: http://charlesreid1.github.io/blog/2014/04/11/octo-iframe/

Deploying Non-Blog Site with Octopress

One of the problems with the help that's available for Jekyll and Octopress is that just about everyone is using them for blogs. So if you want to make a page that's divided by sections and subsections (like a book or a report), then it's less clear how to use Octopress to manage your page. Sure, it's possible to hack Jeckyll to make it do something like that, But Octopress has such a nice workflow, I want to keep using Octopress for those kinds of pages/projects.

This page covers my guide to setting up a non-blog Octopress site: Octopress/Non-blog Octopress Site

Making Lists Look Badass

One of the biggest problems I have with Octopress/Jekyll/Markdown/Github pages is the way that bulleted and numbered lists look so awful.

Here, I describe how you can fix that and get some kick-ass list styles: Octopress/Lists

Finished product: