GitHub

The three stages when you write a blog

1.You uses an existed blog system such as Blogger or WordPress.

2.Due to limitations of the public blog system you uses a third party blog system and put it on your own space or on a public cloud such as GDcms on GAE.

3.You want to write the blog locally with full control and also let other website manages the backup.

This article teaches you how to build a blog on GitHub with jekyll.

Table of Contents Git and GitHub jekyll jekyllbootstrap Important Issues

Git and GitHub

Git is a distributed reversion control system. GitHub is a google code like system which can host your code and enable collaborative development. A lot of popular open source projects are hosted on GitHub such as BootstrapRedisjQuery.

1.Install Git and connect it with your GitHub account

Register an account on GitHub download msysgit for windows. After a long time configuration open the Git Bash and input

git config --global user.name your username git config --global user.email [email protected]

The username and email must match your GitHub account.

In order to create a SSH Public Keys you need input

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C [email protected]

After this you will find the following information

Generating publicprivate rsa key pair Enter file in which to save the key cUsers.sshid_rsa Enter passphrase empty for no passphrase Enter same passphrase again

Omit the file path and enter your password twice.

Your identification has been saved in cUsers.sshid_rsa Your public key has been saved in cUsers.sshid_rsa.pub.

Find the file and open it copy the key to your GitHub account setting SSH Public Keys part.

2.Some common Git operations

Clone remote repository to your computer

git clone [email protected] cd reponame

Add update to a remote repository directly

git init touch README git add README git commit -m first commit git remote add origin [email protected] git push origin master

Change current repository already in GitHub locally and update to remote

git command git commit -m content git push origin master

Other common commands

add Add file contents to the index clone Clone a repository into a new directory commit Record changes to the repository init Create an empty git repository or reinitialize an existing one mv Move or rename a file a directory or a symlink pull Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch push Update remote refs along with associated objects rm Remove files from the working tree and from the index status Show the working tree status

3.Delete history commit

In your repo suppose you want to delete a commit find a commit later than this commit say a6901b3feq.

git rebase -i a6901b3feq

An editor will pop up and show a list of commits after this commit. Simply delete the commit you want and save the document.

git push origin master -f

jekyll

jekyll is a simple blogaware static site generator perfect for personal project or organization sites.

1.Install ruby and jekyll on windows machine

Download and install RubyInstaller for Window. Select Add Ruby executables to your PATH to add ruby to your system environmental variable when you installs the program. After the installation input ruby version in cmd to check whether ruby works.

Install DevKit and input the command in cmd

cd EDevKit ruby dk.rb init ruby dk.rb install

Then you can install related package input the command in cmd

gem install jekyll

jekyllbootstrap

jekyllbootstrap is a full blog scaffold for jekyll based blogs. Log into your GitHub account create a new repository with project name accountname.github.com. Please note this repository must have the same name as your account.

1.Clone jekyllboostrap

git clone httpsgithub.complusjadejekyll-bootstrap.git yourname.github.com cd yourname.github.com git remote set-url origin [email protected]

Then you can input jekyll serve and check the blog content at localhost4000. Note jekyll serve may give rise to an error. You can solve the issue as following

gem uninstall jekyll gem install jekyll version 1.4.2

2.Structure of jekyllbootstrap

config.yml

this file stores the configuration of the blog. We can set name email github twitter account comments analytics in this file.

layouts

this folder stores the templates such as default post page file.

posts

this folder stores the content of blog file name follows the formatyearmonthdaytitle.markup

include

this folder stores the theme templates of blog.

site

this folder stores the temporary local blog.

index.html

this file stores the main page of this blog.

assets

this folder stores the cssjs file each theme uses.

Important Issues

1.Change Theme

You can choose the theme and watch the theme at website. Select the theme click the Install Theme button. I choose theprogram theme input the following command

rake themeinstall git=httpsgithub.comdhulihanthe-program.git rake themeswitch namethe-program

2.Comments

I use disqus. You can register a disqus account and set the shortname related to your account in the config.yml file

comments  provider  disqus  disqus  short_name  XXXXX

3.New domain

First you need to buy your domain. I buy a domain itgeekworkhard.com from Godaddy. Second you need to create a new file CNAME with content itgeekworkhard.com in the project root folder. Note the file does not have any suffix. Third in Godaddy set domain pointing to IP 192.30.252.153. Then set the value of production_url in config.yml to your domain.

4.Figure

Define the variable img_url assetsimages in file config.yml and use site.img_url picture.jpg to insert figures.

5.Blog Analytics

I use google analytics. You can register a google analytics account and set the tracking_id related to your account in the config.yml file

analytics  provider  google  google  tracking_id  XXXXX

6.Pagination

set paginate number in the config.yml file. Number is the number of posts per page. Note there is NO indentation before paginate. For more information you can check jekyll paginate.