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<title>Creating a blog in Python hosted on GitHub using Pelican</title>
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<h1><a href=".">Wade Foster </a></h1>
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<header> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href=""
rel="bookmark" title="Permalink to Creating a blog in Python hosted on GitHub using Pelican">Creating a blog in Python hosted on GitHub using Pelican</a></h1>
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal" data-via="wadefoster">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<abbr class="published" title="2011-03-17T00:00:00">
Thu 17 March 2011
</abbr>
<address class="vcard author">
By <a class="url fn" href="./author/Wade Foster.html">Wade Foster</a>
</address>
<p>In <a href="./category/posts.html">posts</a>. </p>
<p>tags: <a href="./tag/blog.html">blog</a><a href="./tag/python.html">python</a></p>
</footer><!-- /.post-info -->
<p>Tools don't make a good writer, but good tools can certainly help a writer get more done.</p>
<p>I've constantly struggled with the internal workings of Wordpress and always wanted a blog built on python. I've tried rolling my own blog in Django, but ultimately I don't want to maintain my own blog site.</p>
<p>I want something that is simple, light weight, and will get out of my way.</p>
<p>I think I've found a solution.</p>
<h2>Enter Pelican</h2>
<p>Pelican is a static page generator much like ruby's Jekyll. </p>
<p>It's written and maintained by <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ametaireau">Alexis Métaireau</a>. </p>
<p>Why Pelican? Because I:</p>
<ul>
<li>can write blog posts in Sublime using markdown</li>
<li>don't need an internet connection to write</li>
<li>can publish posts using git</li>
<li>have free hosting via <a href="http://pages.github.com/">GitHub pages</a> that scales with me so if ever hit the front page of <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/">HN</a> I'm good to go. </li>
</ul>
<h2>How to setup a blog with Pelican</h2>
<p>Setting up a blog with Python is pretty easy even for someone who hasn't written a ton of code.</p>
<p>First create a repo on GitHub with your repository. Mine is titled wadefoster.github.com.</p>
<p>Next you need to create a directory for storing your blog locally:</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="nb">mkdir</span> <span class="n">mysite</span>
<span class="n">cd</span> <span class="n">mysite</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Once you have your directory set up you can optionally choose to create a <a href="http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/#">virtual environment</a> though this step isn't necessary.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">mkvritualenv</span> <span class="n">env_mysite</span>
<span class="n">workon</span> <span class="n">env_mysite</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Then run the following set of commands to make sure you initialize git and are able to push to GitHub. Substitute your repo name for mine where applicable. </p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">init</span>
<span class="n">touch</span> <span class="n">README</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">add</span> <span class="n">README</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">commit</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">m</span> <span class="s">'first commit'</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">remote</span> <span class="n">add</span> <span class="n">origin</span> <span class="n">git</span><span class="nv">@github</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com:WadeFoster</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">wadefoster</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">github</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">com</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">git</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="nb">push</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">u</span> <span class="n">origin</span> <span class="n">master</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Congrats. You've successful made your first commit. </p>
<p>From here we are ready to install pelican and markdown.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">pip</span> <span class="n">install</span> <span class="n">pelican</span>
<span class="n">pip</span> <span class="n">install</span> <span class="n">markdown</span>
</pre></div>
<p>The last thing you need to do is configure your settings file. </p>
<p>In the root of your directory create a settings.py file. Here's mine as an example:</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="c1"># File Name: settings.py</span>
<span class="n">AUTHOR</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'Wade Foster'</span>
<span class="n">CATEGORY_FEED_RSS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'feeds/%s.rss.xml'</span>
<span class="n">DEFAULT_CATEGORY</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'blog'</span>
<span class="n">DISQUS_SITENAME</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'wadefoster'</span>
<span class="n">FEED_RSS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'feeds/all.rss.xml'</span>
<span class="n">GITHUB_URL</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'https://github.com/wadefoster/wadefoster.github.com'</span>
<span class="n">GOOGLE_ANALYTICS</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">'UA-30070965-1'</span>
<span class="n">SITEURL</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'http://wadefoster.github.com'</span>
<span class="n">SITENAME</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'Wade Foster'</span>
<span class="n">SOCIAL</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">((</span><span class="s">'twitter'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'http://twitter.com/wadefoster'</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'github'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'https://github.com/wadefoster'</span><span class="p">),)</span>
<span class="n">TAG_FEED</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'feeds/%s.atom.xml'</span>
<span class="n">TIMEZONE</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">"America/Chicago"</span>
<span class="n">THEME</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">'notmyidea'</span>
<span class="n">TWITTER_USERNAME</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'wadefoster'</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Now you are ready to start writing.</p>
<h2>Writing blog posts with Pelican using Markdown</h2>
<p>Pelican has us put all of our posts in a subdirectory within the root of our site.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="nb">mkdir</span> <span class="n">posts</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Personally, I call this directory 'posts.' In practice I've seen it called 'content,' 'source,' and a number of other things.</p>
<p>Inside the directory create and open a file called first.md. This is where we'll compose our first post using markdown.</p>
<p>Posts are then formatted using <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax">markdown</a> and you can add a post title, the content of the post, and other meta data like so.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="c1"># File Name: first.md</span>
<span class="n">Date:</span> <span class="mi">2011</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">3</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">17</span>
<span class="n">Title:</span> <span class="n">My</span> <span class="n">First</span> <span class="n">Post</span>
<span class="n">Tags:</span> <span class="n">blog</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">python</span>
<span class="n">Your</span> <span class="n">content</span> <span class="n">goes</span> <span class="n">here</span><span class="o">.</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Save your post and you are ready to publish. </p>
<h2>Publishing blog posts with Pelican</h2>
<p>First let's generate our blog.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">pelican</span> <span class="n">posts</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">o</span> <span class="o">.</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">s</span> <span class="n">settings</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">py</span>
</pre></div>
<p>We run the pelican command, point it to our posts directory, output the generated content to root and apply our settings file.</p>
<p>Next make sure things are running locally so lets fire up a server to view our blog. This should fire up our site on port 8000. </p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">python</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">m</span> <span class="n">SimpleHTTPServer</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Look good? Then we're ready to check in our code and push to master on GitHub for publishing. </p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">add</span> <span class="o">.</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="n">commit</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">m</span> <span class="s">'added our first post'</span>
<span class="n">git</span> <span class="nb">push</span>
</pre></div>
<p>In about ten minutes GitHub will build your page at username.github.com. </p>
<h2>Using a Custom Domain</h2>
<p>If you want to use a custom domain, GitHub provides this functionality for free. </p>
<p>First add a file called CNAME in the root directory of your project with the domain as it's content like so.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">wadefoster</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">net</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Next add an A record to your DNS management for GitHub pointing to <code>207.97.227.245</code>.</p>
<p>It could take a while for the DNS changes to propagate, but you should be good to go. </p>
<p>If you'd like to further customize your pelican blog check out the <a href="http://pelican.notmyidea.org/en/2.8/index.html">pelican documentation</a>.</p>
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