GitBook

Login to GitBook, create a book. Clone to local, modify (all markdown files), push. That's it!

But now it's unstable. Some notes can't be converted. The build ofen fails.

Octopress

Install

Ref: Octopress Setup.

sudo apt-get update
curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby
rvm install 2.2 
rvm rubygems latest

Then install nvm, here I use node.js v6.9.1.

cd ~/apps
git clone git://github.com/imathis/octopress.git octopress
cd octopress
gem install bundler
bundle install
rake install

Note1: Do NOT use ruby 2.1.1, it can't install bundler, while ruby 2.1.2 is OK.

Note2: Ruby 1.9.3 in pre-installed on Ubuntu 14.04. An "Permission denied" error occurs when gem install bundler. You have to rvm install 2.1.2 to build a non-root ruby environment to install bundler.

Note3: If bundle install runs slow or stucked (in common case it takes less than 5s for installing a component), cancel it with Ctrl-C and rerun this command.

Usage

Setup

First create a new repo named ".github.io" on GitHub, "leetschau.github.io" for example.

Then build the blog website framework: rake setup_github_pages. When asked for the repository URL, provide the SSH one for convenient.

Configuration

Modify _config.yml to customize blog's title, subtitle, author and blog descriptions.

Under "3rd Party Settings", set "github_user" as "".

Post new blog

Run the following command to create a new post, and edit post content:

rake new_post["Hello World"]
vi source/_posts/2014-08-18-hello-world.markdown

Preview blog website

Run the following command to generate new post and preview them:

rake generate
rake watch    // optional
rake preview

If it complains no javascript rumtime found, run nvm use 0.10, where version number "0.10" is determined by nvm list. Now preview with url "http://localhost:4000".

Deploy to Github

Run generate and deploy tasks:

rake generate

If it complains no javascript rumtime found, run nvm use 0.10.

rake deploy

You need provide username (without @gmail.com) and password of your github account.

If you use a new octopress, but deploy to an existing github blog, you'll encounter a push failure when rake deploy.

Go to $OCTOPRESS_HOME/_deploy and run:

git pull origin master
git add -A
git ci -m "merge conflict manually"

Run rake deploy again in $OCTOPRESS_HOME, your blogs should be synchronized to github.

There are many other Static site generators. Some based on Python such as Pelican looks lighter than Octopress.