1. Rob Dodson on Octopress: Start off with these instructions from this posting on April 30th, 2012. There are a few differences worth noting:
   1. You may wish to change the .rvmrc to a .ruby-version file
   2. Github recommends your deployment repository be named yourname.github.io, not yourname.github.com.
   3. After you run rake setup_github_pages and before running rake generate, you should run rake install. If you forget, there’s a clear message indicating this omission.
2. Customize octopress/_config.yml. The yaml file contains descriptions.
3. Update the DNS to use your custom domain if you wish: Github directions on setting up a custom domain
4. At this point, you can create a post:

   1	rake new_post["my post name"]

   Create a page:

   1	rake new_page["my page name"]

   Generate and deploy:

   1	rake gen_deploy

   Watch the site and regenerate when it changes:

   1	rake watch

   Preview the site in a web browser:

   1	rake preview

   See all the available rake options:

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   rake -T

   Save changes to source branch:

   1 2 3

   git add . git commit -m "save changes to source" git push origin source

POW allows you to point your browser to http://octopress.dev to see your local, unpublished Octopress website. It’s very convenient to not have to remember to run a local server, and it works great with LiveReload. Scroll to the bottom of this link for details on POW. The alternative to running POW is to run rake preview and then point your browser at http://0.0.0.0:4000 (or whatever port you configured).

LiveReload is a Chrome browser extension that will automatically refresh the browser after you publish your file. This works with or without POW.

• Install the browser extension for your type of browser.
• Add these two entries to your Gemfile, in the :development group:

  1 2	gem 'guard' gem 'guard-livereload'

• Create a file called Guardfile containing something like:

  1 2 3 4

  guard 'livereload' do watch(%r{public/generated}) watch(%r{public/.+\.(css|js|html)}) end

• Start 2 shell tabs running these commands: rake generate && rake watch and guard

  1	> rake generate && rake watch

  This screen shot shows watch updating the deployment files. start guard LiveReload

  1

  > guard

  This screen grab shows guard detecting the browser and telling the browser to update.

It’s neat to get LiveReload working with Octopress. However, the generation can finish after your page does a reload, so you won’t see your latest changes. I’ll update this blog post when I figure out a solution to that one. Until then, you may find it more convenient to manually refresh the blog page yourself.

It’s worth noting that if you’re running any other instance of guard- LiveReload, then one of these two copies will win and one won’t work. If you run a rails server this way, then this can bite you. It took me a bit of time to figure out why guard wasn’t working.

You can skip this section if you’re not interested in org-mode. However, it’s super cool!

• Just configure OCTO_HOME
• Emacs tip: Visit the created file by placing cursor over file name and then hit Ctrl-x, f.

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export OCTO_HOME=~/octopress
ogen () {
  cd $OCTO_HOME; rake generate; cd -
}

osave () {
  cd $OCTO_HOME; git commit -am "Updates" && git push origin source; cd -
}

odeploy () {
  cd $OCTO_HOME; osave; rake gen_deploy; cd -
}

# this one is for orgmode only
opost() {
  cd $OCTO_HOME
  output=$(rake new_post["${1}"])
  new_file=$(echo $output | awk '{print $4}')
  base=$(basename $new_file)
  new_location=$OCTO_HOME/source/org_posts/
  mv $OCTO_HOME/$new_file $new_location
  echo created $new_location/$base
  cd -
}

opage() {
  cd $OCTO_HOME
  rake new_page["${1}"]
  cd -
}

Github offers free hosting of both the blog deployment and source. You’re looking at the deployment right now. You can find the source here at my git repo justin808.github.io. I doubt you could beat the price, performance, and convenience. You can look inside of this repo, clone it, etc. and you have everything that it took to make this blog.

I originally was quite confused by the concept of using two separate git branches to make up what gets deployed on the live website versus the git repository of my articles. Plus, there’s the issue of Octopress git repository that you clone when starting out. Eventually, I figured out that the two branches simply contain different files, with one containing the original Octopress files. Here’s a few screen grabs that might clarify the situation for you.

Don’t forget that you never push to the master branch, but rather the rake deploy task does it for you. Instead, you run git push origin source to push the content of your blog to github.

The octopress/public directory corresponds to what you’ll find on the github site for your deployment (master branch).

The octopress/.gitignore file contains entries like public, which essentially keeps the rake generate files out of the source branch.

Here’s the github master branch right after creation. Note the correspondence with public. This is what gets deployed as your blog.

Here’s the github source branch. This contains the octopress environment, as well as your customizations and blog posts.

1. Getting Started with Octopress: Nice overall tutorial. Very current! March 2013.
2. Rob Dodson on Octopress: Most of the instructions I show below are from this posting on April 30th, 2012.
3. Joel McCracken on Octopress: Use Jekyll? You Really Should Be Using Octopress
4. Github directions on setting up a custom domain
5. dblock.org Article on Octopress: A good explanation from Jan 17, 2012, especially on the difference of the source and master branches.
6. Introducing Octopress Blogging for Org-Mode: For org-mode. See below.
7. 18 Months of Octopress: Nice article on why Octopress was worth the switch.
8. Shell Aliases for Octopress: Save time with these shortcuts

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on this article. I hope you find it helpful. Check me out on Twitter: @RailsOnMaui.