Blogging in Spacemacs

org-page creates a new git repository, with the master containing the static html content suitable for display with Github pages, and a "source" branch containing the org files to generate the html. It provides several useful functions to generate, commit, and push the html. The workflow is very simple.

1. Create a new org file with a common header in /blog
2. Edit the content
3. op/do-publication to publish the blog with git

blog-admin adds a nice layer on top to keep track of the various blog posts, and supports unpublished drafts. They have an awesome GIF on their Github page describing how it works. It's super handy when integrated with evil-mode to find entries, toggle them for publication, and create new ones. I'm a big believer in minimum friction to start a project, so a handy shortcut to create new blog entries is awesome.

Since I use Spacemacs, I decided to set up a new layer to configure org-page:

(defun org-page/init-org-page ()
  (spacemacs/declare-prefix "ab" "blog")
  (use-package org-page
    :config (progn (setq op/repository-directory "~/src/blog"
                         op/site-main-title "pschorf's blog"
                         op/site-sub-title "A work in progress"
                         op/site-domain "https://pschorf.github.io"
                         op/theme-root-directory "~/src/"
                         op/theme 'org-page-theme-kactus
                         op/personal-github-link "http://github.com/pschorf"
                         op/personal-google-analytics-id "UA-74427262-1")
                   (spacemacs/set-leader-keys
                     "abp" 'op/do-publication-and-preview-site
                     "abP" 'op/do-publication))))

This sets up several basic configuration options for org-page like:

• Repository for the blog's source code
• Title
• Google Analytics

It also binds two keys, for preview and publishing, under <spc> a b (for app/blog) in Spacemacs. This was enough to get started and publish a first post. Then, it was time to configure blog-admin to keep track of blog entries and quickly create new ones. I used the existing layer and added a new function:

(defun org-page/init-blog-admin ()
  (use-package blog-admin
    :config (progn (setq blog-admin-backend-type 'org-page
                         blog-admin-backend-path "~/src/blog"
                         blog-admin-backend-new-post-in-drafts t
                         blog-admin-backend-new-post-with-same-name-dir t
                         blog-admin-backend-org-page-drafts "_drafts")
                   (evilified-state-evilify-map blog-admin-mode-map
                     :mode blog-admin-mode)
                   (spacemacs/set-leader-keys
                     "abb" 'blog-admin-start)
                   (setq blog-admin-backend-org-page-template-org-post
                         "#+TITLE: %s
#+AUTHOR: Paul Schorfheide
#+EMAIL: pschorf2@gmail.com
#+LANGUAGE: en
#+OPTIONS: H:3 num:nil toc:nil \\n:nil ::t |:t ^:nil -:nil f:t *:t <:t
#+URI: /blog/%%y/%%m/%%d/
#+DATE: %s
#+TAGS:
#+DESCRIPTON:
"))))

This is slightly more complicated than the previous entry. First, I configure blog-admin based on their documentation. Since it contains a major mode with some keyboard navigation, I call evilified-state-evilify-map to set it up for evil-mode, and set up the spacemacs keys. Finally, I create a more fleshed-out template for new posts. If I have some time, I'd like to customize the way that it formats the template to support more complicated replacement (like completing the uri.)

The source code for the layer is available in my github repo.