Aided by anthropics Claude, I finally managed to cut through the clutter of Jekyll and actually setup a workflow for running this site like I want. Very simply, the actual code can be seen on my Github. In a nutshell its just a Jekyll server running locally that with the aid of a bunch of smaller linux scripts allows me to use VSCode (or any other markdown editor basically) to remove all friction from writing posts - technical friction that is - I sadly still have to write the actual posts but lets see now my blood is up.
The magic (?!?)
Its not REALLY magic but okay basically there are five bash scripts for a range of blog-related activities, like creating new posts from a markdown template, formatting images the right way, and accessing and uploading to the ftp-server at the venerable danish hosting company www.webhosting.dk.
Here’s how the whole workflow works:
graph TD
A[Blog Post Idea] --> B{Create Post}
B --> C[new-post.sh]
C --> D{Post Type?}
D --> E[General Template]
D --> F[Paper Template]
D --> G[Conference Template]
D --> H[Teaching Template]
D --> I[Project Template]
E --> J[drafts folder]
F --> J
G --> J
H --> J
I --> J
J --> K[Write Content]
K --> L{Add Images?}
L -->|Yes| M[optimize-image.sh]
M --> N[assets/img]
L -->|No| O[Preview Drafts]
N --> O
O --> P[jekyll serve --drafts]
P --> Q{Ready to Publish?}
Q -->|No| K
Q -->|Yes| R[publish-draft.sh]
R --> S[posts folder]
S --> T[Deploy]
T --> U[deploy.sh]
U --> V[jekyll build]
V --> W[site folder]
W --> X[FTP Upload]
X --> Y[nbhansen.dk]
Z[blog-helper.sh] --> AA[Quick Commands]
AA --> C
AA --> O
AA --> T
Key Benefits
- One command from idea to draft:
./new-post.sh "Title" - Visual preview with drafts:
bundle exec jekyll serve --drafts - One command deployment:
./deploy.sh - No manual file management - scripts handle naming, dates, front matter
- Template-driven content creation for consistency
so uhm… why not wordpress or something else?
Well, I am a giant nerd, is the first reason. Second, I love the idea of my site here consisting ONLY OF STATIC HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT i mean… its so fast right. Thats why.
Think I do cool stuff? Why not collaborate with me?