gaastonsr/blog

Personal tech blog

How it was set up

# I installed hugo.
$ brew install hugo
# Then created a new site.
$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr
$ hugo new site blog
# Then installed the theme.
$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr/blog
$ git init
$ git subdmodule add git@github.com:LukasJoswiak/etch.git themes/etch
# Then added the theme to `config.toml`.
$ echo 'theme = "etch"' >> config.toml
# Then added the first blog post.
$ hugo new posts/hello-world.md
# And added an about page.
$ hugo new about/index.md
# Started the server.
$ hugo server -D

How it was deployed to GitHub Pages

Here, are the instructions that I followed.

I created a gaastonsr.github.io repository, and then added it as a submodule to this repository.

$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr/blog
$ git submodule add -b master git@github.com:gaastonsr/gaastonsr.github.io.git public
Cloning into '~/git/gaastonsr/blog/public'...
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.
fatal: 'origin/master' is not a commit and a branch 'master' cannot be created from it
Unable to checkout submodule 'public'

An error was returned. To fix that, let's add an empty commit to the repository.

$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr
$ git clone git@github.com:gaastonsr/gaastonsr.github.io.git
$ cd gaastonsr.github.io
$ git commit --allow-empty -m 'Initial commit'
$ git push

Now if I try to add the submodule again, it won't work because the previous git submodule add operation had a fatal error and left the submodule in a dirty state where the submodule wasn't added, that can be verified by checking that there is not settings for the submodule in .gitmodules and .git/config but at the same time the empty repository was copied locally, that can be verified by checking that git repositories exist at public/.git and .git/modules/public, so some cleanup is needed before the submodule can be added again.

$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr/blog
# Remove resources created by the previous unsuccesful `git submodule add`.
$ rm -rf public && rm -rf .git/modules/public
$ git submodule add -b master git@github.com:gaastonsr/gaastonsr.github.io.git public
Cloning into '~/git/gaastonsr/blog/public'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 2, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 2 (delta 0), reused 2 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (2/2), done.

It worked now, yay!

Deploying to GitHub Pages

To automate the process a deploy.sh script was created.

# Create the script.
$ cd ~/git/gaastonsr/blog
$ touch deploy.sh
# Give it execution permissions.
$ chmod u+x deploy.sh

Add the script shown here. And now ./deploy.sh "Optional commit message" can be used to deploy your changes.

Adding a custom domain

Documentation.

Go to the blog settings and under the "GitHub Pages" section add your domain, in this case wwww.gaston.dev.

Now go to your DNS provider and set up CNAME record that points to gaastonsr.github.io. In this case CNAME www.gaston.dev -> gaastonsr.github.io.

Recommended set up to update the blog

Install hugo: bew install hugo (more info).
Install a toml extension for you code editor.

Common actions

Start the server: hugo server -D.
Create a post: hugo new posts/hello-world.md.
Create a page: hugo new about/index.md.
Deploy changes: deploy.sh "Optional commit message". Don't forget commiting your changes after deploying.

gaastonsr / blog