erict.net

Personal blog built with Jekyll and deployed to GitHub Pages at erict.net.

Prerequisites

• Ruby (3.3 recommended)
• Bundler: gem install bundler

Setup

Install dependencies:

bundle install

Writing Posts

Posts live in _posts/ and must follow Jekyll's naming convention:

YYYY-MM-DD-your-post-title.md

Each post needs front matter at the top:

---
layout: post
title: "Your Post Title"
tags: tag1 tag2
permalink:
---

Drafts go in _drafts/ and are excluded from builds by default. To preview drafts locally, pass --drafts to the serve command (see below).

Building

To build the site into _site/:

bundle exec jekyll build

For a production build (sets JEKYLL_ENV=production, which enables Disqus comments):

JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build

Serving Locally

To serve the site at http://localhost:4000 with live reload:

bundle exec jekyll serve

To also render drafts from _drafts/:

bundle exec jekyll serve --drafts

To serve without live reload (faster startup):

bundle exec jekyll serve --no-watch

The _site/ directory is regenerated on each build and is git-ignored.

Using Obsidian

The repo doubles as an Obsidian vault. Open the root of this repo as your vault in Obsidian.

Writing posts in Obsidian

Use the built-in template to start a new post. Open the command palette (Cmd+P) and run Templates: Insert template, then select the post template. This inserts the correct Jekyll front matter for you.

The template is stored in _obsidian-templates/. Create new post files directly in _posts/ and name them YYYY-MM-DD-your-title.md.

Image attachments

Obsidian is configured to save pasted or dragged images into assets/images/, which is where Jekyll expects static assets. Images will be available at /assets/images/your-image.png in posts.

What Obsidian config files do

The .obsidian/ directory stores your vault settings (workspace layout, enabled plugins, theme, etc.). It is git-tracked so the setup is reproducible, but it is excluded from Jekyll builds via _config.yml.

Deployment (GitHub Actions)

Pushing to master automatically builds and deploys the site to GitHub Pages via the workflow in .github/workflows/jekyll.yml.

What the workflow does

1. Checks out the repo
2. Sets up Ruby 3.3 with Bundler caching
3. Runs bundle exec jekyll build with JEKYLL_ENV=production
4. Uploads the built _site/ as a Pages artifact
5. Deploys the artifact to GitHub Pages

When it runs

• On every push to master
• Manually via Actions > Build and deploy Jekyll site > Run workflow in the GitHub UI

Only one deployment runs at a time. A new push to master while a deploy is in progress will queue behind it (it will not cancel the in-flight deploy).

Custom domain

The CNAME file contains erict.net, which tells GitHub Pages to serve the site on the custom domain. Do not delete this file.