This article explains the setup of this blog. The two essential technical ingredients are the Jekyll static blog generator and the free GitHub Pages hosting service.

We found it wishful to have a blog for writing about technical topics related to our everyday work and in particular related to ProSuite development. The articles here are expected to be of most value to ourselves, but if they find a wider use that is much appreciated.

About GitHub Pages

  • a static site hosting service (no server-side code)
  • publishes any static files straight from a repository, optionally run through a builder (Jekyll by default)
  • having domain user.github.io/repository (other possibilities exist)
  • GitHub Pages are public even if generated from a non-public repo!

Three types of sites:

  1. Project (has a few options for the publishing source)
  2. User (always from branch master in repo user.github.io)
  3. Organization (always from branch master in repo org.github.io)

This blog was initially set up as a project site, using the master branch of the blog’s repository as the publishing source.

Usage limits (as of July 2020, will hardly hurt us):

  • data: max 1 GB (soft for source repo, hard for published pages)
  • bandwidth: 100GB per month
  • building: 10 builds per hour

About Jekyll

A blog-aware static site generator written in Ruby:

  • supports Markdown, Liquid (templating) and Sass (CSS preprocessor)
  • configuration: _config.yml in root dir (should rarely change)
  • Jekyll does not build files/folders starting with _, ., # or ending with ~ (can override in config)
  • “Front matter” to set or override title, layout, permalink, category, etc.
  • Themes: available, start with default theme, can easily customize or write your own

Installation

Local installation assuming Windows (each contributor, optional):

The remaining steps are about creating the repository and the initial content. Do not repeat – it was already done and is documented here only for reference.

  • Log in to https://GitHub.com/ProSuite
  • Create new repository techblog, visibility Public
  • Open a Git Bash command line
  • git init ProSuiteTechBlog
  • cd ProSuiteTechBlog
  • jekyll new . (creates the directory structure and a sample post)
  • optional: edit partials, styles, posts, etc.
  • edit _config.yml: set baseurl: /techblog and url: "https://prosuite.github.io"
  • git commit -m "Initial commit"
  • git remote add origin https://github.com/ProSuite/techblog.git
  • git push -u origin master
  • Go again to https://GitHub.com/ProSuite/techblog and in the repo’s settings, choose “master branch” for the source; do not modify the theme.
  • Now GitHub Pages should build the site; this may take some time.
  • Check the generated site: https://ProSuite.GitHub.io/techblog

Authoring

Git clone this repository.
Follow instructions in the root README.md file.
You need Jekyll and Ruby only for previewing.
If bold enough, just write your articles.