Moving my blog to Github Pages

Thu 26 April 2018

Since I am evaluating the use of the different servers that I own, I am trying to move things away from the servers to free tools or platforms. For example, you can host notebooks on Azure for free and Github supports the hosting of static websites on Github pages. Ideally I would like to remove two of the three servers that I own to both reduce costs and improve my knowledge of the different available platforms. Below I describe the steps I took to move my website to the new location.

Creating the Github page

Create two repositories

https://github.com/new

jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io-source (This repository contains source for the Pelican blog for my homepage)
jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io (This repository contains the Pelican blog for my homepage)

Set up the Pelican blog

Copy the source repository to the machine:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ git clone https://github.com/jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io-source.git
Cloning into 'jitsejan.github.io-source'...
remote: Counting objects: 4, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
remote: Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

Verify the repository is correct:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ cd jitsejan.github.io-source/
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io-source.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io-source.git (push)

Add the output repository as a submodule to the source repo:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ git submodule add  https://github.com/jitsejan/jitsejan.github.io.git output
Cloning into 'output'...
remote: Counting objects: 4, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
remote: Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

Create the Pelican application using the quickstart tool:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ pelican-quickstart 
Welcome to pelican-quickstart v3.6.3.

This script will help you create a new Pelican-based website.

Please answer the following questions so this script can generate the files
needed by Pelican.


> Where do you want to create your new web site? [.] 
> What will be the title of this web site? JJs World
> Who will be the author of this web site? Jitse-Jan
> What will be the default language of this web site? [en] 
> Do you want to specify a URL prefix? e.g., http://example.com   (Y/n) 
> What is your URL prefix? (see above example; no trailing slash) https://jitsejan.github.io
> Do you want to enable article pagination? (Y/n) 
> How many articles per page do you want? [10] 
> What is your time zone? [Europe/Paris] Europe/London
> Do you want to generate a Fabfile/Makefile to automate generation and publishing? (Y/n) 
> Do you want an auto-reload & simpleHTTP script to assist with theme and site development? (Y/n) 
> Do you want to upload your website using FTP? (y/N) n
> Do you want to upload your website using SSH? (y/N) n
> Do you want to upload your website using Dropbox? (y/N) n
> Do you want to upload your website using S3? (y/N) n
> Do you want to upload your website using Rackspace Cloud Files? (y/N) n
> Do you want to upload your website using GitHub Pages? (y/N) Y
> Is this your personal page (username.github.io)? (y/N) Y
Error: [Errno 17] File exists: '/home/jitsejan/code/jitsejan.github.io-source/output'
Done. Your new project is available at /home/jitsejan/code/jitsejan.github.io-source

Change the publishconf.py to not delete the output directory:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- #
from __future__ import unicode_literals

# This file is only used if you use `make publish` or
# explicitly specify it as your config file.

import os
import sys
sys.path.append(os.curdir)
from pelicanconf import *

SITEURL = 'http://jitsejan.github.io'
RELATIVE_URLS = False

FEED_ALL_ATOM = 'feeds/all.atom.xml'
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = 'feeds/%s.atom.xml'

DELETE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY = False

# Following items are often useful when publishing

#DISQUS_SITENAME = ""
#GOOGLE_ANALYTICS = ""

Create the first post:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ cat content/first-post.md 
Title: My first post
Date: 2018-04-26 13:00
Modified: 2018-04-26 13:00
Tags: fipo
Category: dummy-data
Slug: my-first-post
Authors: Jitse-Jan
Summary: The first post of the Pelican blog on Github pages.

I am migrating my website from my VPS to Github pages as an experiment.

Build the website and serve its contents:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ make html && make serve
pelican /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/content -o /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/output -s /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/pelicanconf.py 
WARNING: No valid files found in content.
Done: Processed 0 articles, 0 drafts, 0 pages and 0 hidden pages in 0.07 seconds.
cd /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/output && python -m pelican.server

Generate the static content for the website:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ make publish
pelican /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/content -o /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/output -s /home/jitsejan/code/pelican-source/publishconf.py 
Done: Processed 1 article, 0 drafts, 0 pages and 0 hidden pages in 0.14 seconds.

Push the output code to the jitsejan.github.io repository:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ cd output/
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source/output$ git add .
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source/output$ git commit -m 'My first post'
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source/output$ git push -u origin master

Push the source code to the jitsejan.github.io-source repository:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source/output$ cd ..
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ echo '*.pyc' >> .gitignore
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ git add .
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ git commit -m 'My first commit'
jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ git push -u origin master

Now the homepage is ready on https://jitsejan.github.io/!

Inspiration link

Merge the original Pelican blog

Copy the data

Clone the old repository and overwrite the contents of the Github pages repo:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ git clone https://github.com/jitsejan/pelican-blog
jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ rm -rf jitsejan.github.io-source/content/
jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ rm -rf ../jitsejan.github.io-source/themes/
jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ mv pelican-blog/* jitsejan.github.io-source

Additionally the DELETE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY had to be set to False again in publishconf.py.

Issues

Some Python libraries were missing and the pip install had to be done first:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code/jitsejan.github.io-source$ pip install -r requirements.txt

The less compiler was missing:

jitsejan@dev16:~/code$ sudo npm install -g less

I had to remove the ipynb plugin and reinstall it by adding it again as a submodule:

git submodule add git://github.com/danielfrg/pelican-ipynb.git plugins/ipynb

Final steps

To make the Github URL work with my own domain, I had to follow several steps:

Add the custom domain name (www.jitsejan.com) to the Github Page repository in a file CNAME in the root (or via the Settings tab)
Update the DNS record for my DreamHost account and modify the two primary nameservers to point to Cloudflare and remove the additional ones. (Nameserver 1: janet.ns.cloudflare.com, Nameserver 2: marty.ns.cloudflare.com)
Add DNS records in Cloudflare. One CNAME for www and one CNAME for jitsejan.com to point to jitsejan.github.io.

Done. No more server needed for hosting a blog!

infra static hosting