My blog process with org

Source

I keep forgetting the steps I need to do for the blogging from this org file, so I am logging the steps here.

The directory organization looks like this:

  • posts

    • 2011

    • 2012

    • 2013

  • pages

  • static

The dates are mainly an organizational tool for me. Inside the dated folders, there are files named like 2012-01-01-an-example-post.org. I am currently using the date in the filename as the date of the post, without a time variable. The rest of the text in the name is again mainly for my organization. The title of the post is kept inside the org file.

The pages folder is for stuff that I don't really consider a post, things that are references that I may go back and update, or eventually get rid of.

For now, I am using some elisp in my emacs config file to create the post index from the files containing the posts. The code creates the listing on demand, instead of every time I publish -- that way I can review the changes before publishing.

Here is the code I use for creating the indices. It takes as a parameter the path to the directory that I want to index. Then, it finds all of the .org files, grabs their titles, and inserts them into the current buffer.

(defun org-dblock-write:my-get-posts (params)
  (let ((path (plist-get params :path)))
    (let ((files
           (mapcar (lambda (f)
                     (concat (file-name-as-directory path)
                             f))
                   (directory-files path nil "\.*org$"))))
      (setq files (nreverse files))
      (dolist (file files)
        (let ((title (org-publish-find-title file)))
          (message file)
          (message title)
          (insert (format " - [[file:%s][%s]]" file title))
          (newline))))))

To use the code, I put blocks that look like this one into my index.org file.

** 2013
#+BEGIN: my-get-posts :path "posts/2013"
#+END:

To run the snippet, inside of the block I use the command org-dblock-update, bound to C-c C-x C-u. Manually calling this is a pain, but then I can verify that the links/text look the way I want.

When I am all done, I call org-publish-project to create the output. Then, next, I look in the publishing directory, with git status to see what has changed. Finally, I commit, push to github, and view.

Stuff to do:

  • make the generated timestamp match the file name, instead of constantly updating the stamp.

  • get more details of the config it here.