In Part 1 we've setup our github.io website and kick started out [Pelican] blog. Now, in this second tutorial, we'll configure Fabric and Pelican configuration and when it's all done, we'll create a blog post. And push it to github source branch and generated HTML to master branch.

First, let's setup our blog theme.

Pelican has tons of themes. All themes can be previewed at pelicanthemes.com. You can pick any themes you like. And, if you are not satisfied with the existing themes, you can also create your own theme. For this tutorial, we'll be using a theme called Flex by Alexandre Vicenzi.

To setup a theme, create folder inside your username.github.io directory and name it themes. Now cd into that directory and clone the Flex repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/alexandrevicenzi/Flex.git

You can setup plugins in same way as the themes. The official repository for the plugins is pelican-plugins. We won't setup plugins in this tutorial. You can read the documentation by yourself to setup the plugins or I'll be posting a seperate tutorial post on how to setup plugins shortly*.

Configuration

We have our Flex theme inside our theme directory. Our theme needs a site logo. Site logo should be placed in a images directory. So, create an images folder inside the content folder. Paste an image in that folder. If you don't have any, default image will be rendered.

For the configuration, we'll be working on pelicanconf.py, publishconf.py and fabfile.py.

First let's look at pelicanconf.py. Open it in a text editor and update it as described in the snippet below. See the comments beginning with # to know what's happening.

from __future__ import unicode_literals

AUTHOR = u'Your Name'
SITENAME = u'Your Blog Name'
SITEURL = u'http://localhost:8000' #used for local build and preview
SITETITLE = AUTHOR
SITESUBTITLE = 'Your own text' #needed for theme
SITEDESCRIPTION = u'your site description' #used for meta tag for SEO purposes
PATH = 'content' # location to where your articles/posts are located

TIMEZONE = 'Asia/Kathmandu' # Your current time zone

DEFAULT_LANG = u'en'

DATE_FORMATS = {
    'en': '%B %d, %Y',
}

USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY = False
COPYRIGHT_YEAR = 2017
DEFAULT_PAGINATION = 7

# Theme Settings
SITELOGO = '/images/Your picture' #your site logo
FAVICON = '/images/favicon.png' #your favicon
THEME = 'themes/Flex' #path to your theme
BROWSER_COLOR = '#333333'
PYGMENTS_STYLE = 'default' #for code highlighting

# Blogroll
# if you want to link to external page
LINKS = (('link1', 'Your link'),)

# Social widget
# You can add your own links for facebook, twitter
SOCIAL = (('Facebook', 'Your facebook link'),
         ('Twitter', '#'),)

DEFAULT_PAGINATION = 10

If you want to know more details about the configuration, go here.

Next, open publishconf.py file and modify these lines:

...
SITEURL = 'https://your_username.github.io'
RELATIVE_URLS = False
...

Our first post

cd to your content directory and create a folder called articles. Inside that articles folder create a new file called FirstPost.md. Open that FirstPost.md file in a text editor and paste the lines as shown below:

Title: My super title
Date: 2010-12-03 10:20
Modified: 2010-12-05 19:30
Category: abc
Tags: abc, xyz
Slug: my-super-post
Authors: Your name
Summary: Short description

This is the content of my super blog post.

To know more, read the official documentation.

Generate HTML

Go to the root directory of the project or simple do $ cd .. in the terminal, and type

$ fab clean; fab build; fab serve;

and browse to http://localhost:8000. You'll see new shining blog with new design.

Commit and push to Github

** First, let's push our source code.**

Type these commands one by one.

$ git checkout source
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Configuration, themes and first post"
$ git push

** Push the HTML contents in the master branch.**

$ ghp-import -m 'First push to github.io' -b master output"
$ git push -u origin master

Now, redirect your browser to 'https://your_username.github.io' to view your online blog.

Upto this you have your blog hosted in github pages and is available to public viewing. Next, I'll be posting some small tutorials on how to add disqus comments, google analytics, automate publish using Fabric API, adding and configuring plugins and many more.

Keep visiting my website.