This page documents the correct way to blog in 2015.

Overview

• CloudFlare
• git / GitHub

Prerequisites

• Domain Name
• Mac OS X Workstation
• Apple Xcode
• Homebrew Package Manager
• Text Editor (vim or Atom)

Blog Setup

Use Jekyll to generate your site.

Use Git to manage your site’s history, and GitHub to visualize it.

• Create a new directory and change into it.
• Install a Makefile. Edit the S3 bucket URL below to the name of the bucket you’ve just created.

default: localserve

_site: vendor
    bundle exec jekyll build

vendor:
    bundle install --path vendor/bundle --binstubs vendor/bundle/bin

localserve: vendor
    bundle exec jekyll serve

clean:
    rm -rf tmp _site

distclean: clean
    rm -rfv vendor

deploy: _site
    git commit -a
    git push

• Install a .gitignore file.

_site
.sass-cache
vendor
.bundle

• Install a Gemfile.

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'jekyll'

• Install a _config.yml (edit to suit.)

# Site settings
title: My Blog Title
email: me@example.com
description: > # this means to ignore newlines until "baseurl:"
  My interesting blog site.
baseurl: "" # the subpath of your site, e.g. /blog/
url: "https://example.com" # the base hostname & protocol for your site
twitter_username: exampleuser
github_username: exampleuser
exclude: # these are important!
    - Makefile
    - .gitignore
    - Gemfile
    - Gemfile.lock
    - vendor
    - README.markdown
# Build settings
markdown: kramdown
sass:
  style: compressed
permalink: /:year:month:day/:title/

• git init
• git commit Makefile .gitignore Gemfile -m "initial"
• bundle exec jekyll new .

Edit and Test

• make will serve your site at http://127.0.0.1:4000/.
• Edit any necessary layouts, posts, or other files.
• Commit your changes when complete.
• Upload your site to Github with make deploy.
• Test at http://username.github.io.

TLS Key

Use StartSSL to get a TLS certificate for free.

Do not perform these steps in your blog directory.

• Generate a key and Certificate Signing Request (CSR) using command line openssl. Generate a 2048 bit RSA key. (CloudFront won’t support 4096.)

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 \
    -keyout example.com.key.pem \
    -out example.com.csr

• Upload TLS Key and Certificate to CloudFlare

CloudFlare

• Change your domain DNS settings to CloudFlare.
• Add a CNAME record for the root of your domain, as well as www, with the value githubusername.github.io.

To Post

• Clone repo
• Make edits in _pages, _posts, et c.
• Commit and push to GitHub.