This blog is hosted entirely on Github Pages, powered by the blogging framework for hacker – Octopress.

As mentioned in the previous post, I have switched from Wordpress to Octopress. This post, I am writing the steps on how I get it running.

Setup

You need to install Git and Ruby 1.9.3. As Octopress must use Ruby 1.9.3, if ruby --version does not give you 1.9.3, then you must install via rbenv.

Follow the guide for rbenv. Do the standard method if you have Mac Ports installed (cos it will conflict with Homebrew).

If you are using Mac, you will need to download and install OSX GCC Compiler because Apple no longer includes that, and Ruby needs that.

An exception for me is that I installed p194 instead of p0. You might need other post revisions.

# Here's how I found out
rake new_post["Switched Wordpress to Octopress"]
rbenv: version `1.9.3-p194' is not installed

# Hence..
rbenv install 1.9.3-p194
rbenv global 1.9.3-p194

With Ruby 1.9.3, setup octopress.

gem install bundler
rbenv rehash
bundle install

Deploy

I chose to deploy to Github Pages, since it’s free as long as you don’t mind pushing your ‘code’ to public. Follow the guide at Octopress.

It is interesting to notice that rake setup_github_pages does 2 things:

1. master branch is your _deploy directory (the static html)
2. source branch contains the project less _deploy (the markdowns, config and plugins)

To deploy:

rake generate
rake deploy

Note that rake deploy will commit and push up to the master branch. In a few minutes, Github will be serving those webpages (it takes longer for the first time).

So what about the source branch? You should also commit and push them.

git add .
git commit -m 'your message'
git push origin source

Custom Domain

I am using my custom domain samwize.just2us.com, instead of samwize.github.com. This can be accomplished easily be adding a CNAME file.

echo 'your-domain.com' >> source/CNAME

Then setup your DNS. For myself, I added a new CNAME record samwize.just2us.com pointing to samwize.github.com.

If you are using a Top-level domain, add a A record pointing to 204.232.175.78.

New Post

This is my process whenever I have a new blog post.

rake new_post["My New Post"]

# edit my-new-post.markdown with text editor

rake preview

# Open http://localhost:4000 for a preview
# Edit and preview until satified

# Ready to publish
rake generate
rake deploy

# Commit source
git add .
git commit -m 'your message'
git push origin source