Not a big fan of blog, but I was really fascinated by this idea of having a static microblog site which is:
- written in plain text with your preferred markup language
- generated and themed on-the-fly
- version controlled by git
While Jekyll and Octopress are two such excellent tools, they are all written in Ruby, which I'm not quite familiar with. I was not able to find a Python equivalent tool until not very long ago I found Jake's blog. It was well themed and all the articles are great to read. I can't refrain the idea of having a similar blog site of my own. It turned out to be not very complicated, I am using Ubuntu and followed the steps below.
Install prerequisites:
$ sudo apt-get install pip
$ sudo pip install pelican
$ sudo pip install markdown
Install octopress theme for pelican
$ git clone https://github.com/duilio/pelican-octopress-theme
$ sudo pelican-themes -i pelican-octopress-theme pelican-octopress-theme/
Kickstart the site with pelican
$ pelican-quickstart
Welcome to pelican-quickstart v3.3.0.
This script will help you create a new Pelican-based website.
Please answer the following questions so this script can generate the files
needed by Pelican.
> Where do you want to create your new web site? [.]
> What will be the title of this web site? Another Code Farmer's Backyard
> Who will be the author of this web site? Eric Miao
> What will be the default language of this web site? [en]
> Do you want to specify a URL prefix? e.g., http://example.com (Y/n) n
> Do you want to enable article pagination? (Y/n) n
> Do you want to generate a Fabfile/Makefile to automate generation and publishing? (Y/n)
> Do you want an auto-reload & simpleHTTP script to assist with theme and site development? (Y/n)
> Do you want to upload your website using FTP? (y/N)
> Do you want to upload your website using SSH? (y/N)
> Do you want to upload your website using Dropbox? (y/N)
> Do you want to upload your website using S3? (y/N)
> Do you want to upload your website using Rackspace Cloud Files? (y/N)
Voila! Create your first article
Creating a plain text file in the folder of content, name the file in format
yyyy-mm-dd-<post-topic>.md. For example:
Title: My super title
Date: 2010-12-03 10:20
Category: Python
Tags: pelican, publishing
Slug: my-super-post
Author: Alexis Metaireau
Summary: Short version for index and feeds
This is the content of my super blog post.
Change pelicanconf.py to use octopress theme:
diff --git a/pelicanconf.py b/pelicanconf.py
index 590c26d..c6b05d1 100644
--- a/pelicanconf.py
+++ b/pelicanconf.py
@@ -29,3 +29,5 @@ DEFAULT_PAGINATION = False
# Uncomment following line if you want document-relative URLs when developing
#RELATIVE_URLS = True
+
+THEME = 'pelican-octopress-theme'
Generate and check the site:
$ make html
$ cd output && python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
Deploy when satisfied
For example, github pages is a good choice.