Octopress is [Jekyll](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll) blogging at its finest.
1. **Octopress sports a clean responsive theme** written in semantic HTML5, focused on readability and friendliness toward mobile devices.
2. **Code blogging is easy and beautiful.** Embed code (with [Solarized](http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized) styling) in your posts from gists or from your filesystem.
3. **Third party integration is simple** with built-in support for Twitter, Pinboard, Delicious, Disqus Comments, and Google Analytics.
4. **It's easy to use.** A collection of rake tasks simplifies development and makes deploying a cinch.
5. **Ships with great plugins** some original and others from the Jekyll community — tested and improved.
## Getting Started
[Create a new repository](https://github.com/repositories/new) for your website then
open up a terminal and follow along. If you plan to host your site on [Github Pages](http://pages.github.com) for a user or organization, make sure the
repository is named `your_username.github.com` or `your_organization.github.com`.
# Next, if you're using Github user or organization pages,
# Create a source branch and push to origin source.
git branch source
git push origin source
Next, setup an [RVM](http://beginrescueend.com/) and install dependencies.
rvm rvmrc trust
bundle install
# Install pygments (for syntax highlighing)
sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install pygments
Install the default Octopress theme,
rake install
and you should be all set up to begin blogging with Octopress.
### Generate & Preview
rake generate # Generates your blog into the public directory
rake watch # Watches files for changes and regenerates your blog
rake preview # Watches, and mounts a webserver at http://localhost:4000
Jekyll's built in webbrick server is handy, but if you're a [POW](http://pow.cx) user, you can set it up to work with Octopress like this.
cd ~/.pow
ln -s /path/to/octopress
cd -
Now that you're setup with POW, you'll just run `rake watch` and load up `http://octopress.dev` instead.
## Writing A Post
Create your first post.
rake new_post["hello world"]
This will put a new post with a name like like `2011-07-3-hello-world.markdown` in the `source/_posts` directory.
Open that file in your favorite text editor and you'll see a block of [yaml front matter](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki/yaml-front-matter)
which tells Jekyll how to processes posts and pages.
---
layout: post
title: "Hello World"
date: 2011-07-03 5:59
comments: true
categories:
---
Now beneath the yaml block, go ahead and type up a sample post, or use some [inspired filler](http://baconipsum.com/). If you're running the watcher, save and refresh your browser and you
should see the new post show up in your blog index.
Octopress does more than this though. Check out [Blogging with Octopress](#include_link) to learn about all the different ways Octopress makes blogging easier.
## Configuring Octopress
I've tried to keep configuring Octopress fairly simple. Here's a list of files for configuring Octopress.
_config.yml # Main config (Jekyll blog settings)
Rakefile # Config for Rsync deployment
config.rb # Compass config
sass/custom/_colors.scss # change your blog's color scheme
sass/custom/_layout.scss # change your blog's layout
sass/custom/_styles.scss # override your blog's styles
Octopress keeps it's main configurations in two places, the `Rakefile` and the `_config.yml`. You probably won't have to change anything in the rakefile except the
deployment configurations (if you're going to [deploy with Rsync over SSH](#deploy_with_rsync)).
## Deploying
### Deploying with Rsync via SSH
Add your server configurations to the `Rakefile` under Rsync deploy config. To deploy with Rsync, be sure your public key is listed in your server's `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` file.
ssh_user = "user@domain.com"
document_root = "~/website.com/"
Now if you run `rake deploy` in your terminal, your `public` directory will be synced to your server's document root.
### Deploying to Github Pages
To setup deployment, you'll want to clone your target repository into the `_deploy` directory in your Octopress project.
If you're using Github project pages, clone the repository for that project, eg `git@github.com:username/project.git`.
If you're using Github user or organization pages, clone the repository `git@github.com:usernem/username.github.com.git`.
The `config_deploy` rake task takes a branch name as an argument and creates a [new empty branch](http://book.git-scm.com/5_creating_new_empty_branches.html), and adds an initial commit.
This prepares your branch for easy deployment. The `rake deploy` task copies the generated blog from the `public` directory to the `_deploy` directory, adds new files, removes old files, sets a commit message, and pushes to Github.
Github will queue your site for publishing (which usually occurs instantly or within minutes if it's your first commit).
### Deploying to a Subdirectory (Github Project Pages does this)
If you're deploying to a subdirectory on your site, or if you're using Github's project pages, make sure you set up your urls correctly in your configs.
You can do this *almost* automatically:
rake set_root_dir[your/path]
# To go back to publishing to the document root
rake set_root_dir[/]
Then update your `_config.yml` and `Rakefile` as follows:
# _config.yml
url: http://yoursite.com/your/path
# Rakefile (if deploying with rsync)
document_root = "~/yoursite.com/your/path"
To manually configure deployment to a subdirectory, you'll change `_config.yml`, `config.rb` and `Rakefile`
# Example for deploying to Octopress's Github Pages
# _config.yml
destination: public/octopress
url: http://imathis.github.com/octopress
subscribe_rss: /octopress/atom.xml
root: /octopress
# config.rb - for Compass & Sass
http_path = "/octopress"
http_images_path = "/octopress/images"
http_fonts_path = "/octopress/fonts"
css_dir = "public/octopress/stylesheets"
## Documentation
# Rakefile
public_dir = "public/octopress"
# If deploying with rsync, update your Rakefile path
document_root = "~/yoursite.com/your/path"
Check out [Octopress.org](http://octopress.org/docs) for guides and documentation.
Brandon Mathis
13 years ago