kpacha

Building a simple static blog with carew

Jan 12th, 2014

I think the best topic for a first post must be 'how did I build this?', so here we go!

First of all, as I want my blog be served at github pages, I create a new repo name kpacha.github.io. I know the cookbook recomends an easier way, but I don't want the carew installation on my master branch so, my repo has two branches:

  • The master branch stores the last static website builded as it's intended to serve the web contents for github pages
  • The editor branch stores the carew project and all the markdown pages

So the workflow I'm following here is quite simple:

  • checkout the editor branch
  • create new post
  • re-build website
  • commit changes
  • merge the new website to master
  • commit changes
  • push both branches

Initial setup#

Create a new github repo named <YOUR-GITHUB-USER>.github.io and clone it somewhere in your system

$ git clone https://github.com/<YOUR-GITHUB-USER>/<YOUR-GITHUB-USER>.github.io.git
$ cd <YOUR-GITHUB-USER>.github.io

Editor branch#

Create your editor branch just typing

$ git checkout -b editor

Carew Installation#

The best way to start with carew is to use the carew boilerplate: You will need composer.

$ php composer.phar create-project carew/boilerplate . -s dev
$ bin/carew build

That's all, you can browse the web/ directory.

Now you must edit the confi.yml and the posts/ and pages/ folder contents.

Git integration#

Once your editor branch has a carew project working, it's time to integrate it in your workflow. It could be done just by adding two more files to the editor branch: .gitignore and install.

.gitignore will prevent you from adding the bin/ and vendor/ folders

/vendor/
/bin/

Also, install will be useful when you want to install your editor environment after a git clone

#!/bin/bash
composer install -o
bin/carew build

Remeber to add execution permisions

chmod +x install

Now you can add the root folder into git.

In future checkouts from scratch, you will need to run the install script before be ready to work!

$ git clone https://github.com/kpacha/kpacha.github.io.git
$ git checkout editor
$ ./install

Master branch#

Checkout your master branch

$ git checkout master

And add the .gitignore file from the editor branch

$ git checkout editor -- .gitignore

Create a file called update.sh

#!/bin/bash
git checkout editor -- web
cp -rp web/* .
rm -rf web
git reset HEAD web
git status

After adding the execution permissions to update.sh, add them to git

$ chmod +x update.sh
$ git add .gitignore update.sh
$ git commit -m "set up the master branch"

Now, every time you want to push your generated statics you must run the update.sh script, add the untracked files listed, commit them and push the branch to github

Posting#

From the editor branch, create your post entry

$ bin/carew generate:post "New post title"

Edit your entry and rebuild your web

$ bin/carew build

Now it's time to commit your changes into your editor branch and update your master one. Just type

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "adding the 'New post title'"
$ git checkout master
$ ./update.sh
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "publishing the 'New post title'"
$ git push origin editor
$ git push origin master

And you're done!

Extra tip#

Put the code for posting in a script for faster publishing. Let's call it publish

#!/bin/bash
git add .
git commit -m "adding the '$1'"
git checkout master
./update.sh
git add .
git commit -m "publishing the '$1'"
git push origin editor
git push origin master

Do not forget to set the execution permisions

$ chmod +x publish

And, after a succesful build, just run

$ ./publish "New post title"

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