This post is specially written for the celebration of completing 200+ followers on dev.to .
I started blogging about technologies, nature and Science at a young age of 13 , at 2014 I started a Blogger blog called AlphaPedia , it had barely 1000 monthly unique visitors and 5 to 10 daily visitors. That time I knew nothing about blogging , so after few weeks I got bored and started mainly focusing on Programming so I Left Blogging!
But Again, In 2018 , Palash Bauri returned , enriched with knowledge and skills. . . I started a new blog Adventure Of Palash and It is a kind of success to me.
Now It has more than 7000 unique visitors and increasing.
I'm thinking of writing an article how to start with no money and create & maintain a good looking blog.
I mainly use open source technologies to run and maintain my blog, today I'll share with you guys what tools I use for blogging.
So Let's Start!
• GitHub Pages
If you're from open source community, you might have heard the name of platform GitHub
Yes you guessed right I use GitHub Pages to host my blog.
• Git
As usual a version control is definitely needed to use GitHub and Push Changes.
Being easy to use and default on GitHub , I Use Git ,
• Jekyll & Jasper 2 (theme)
Jekyll is the preferred static site generator for GitHub Pages , so as usual I use Jekyll to build my site with help of Travis-CI (I had to use Travis-CI because due to security reasons GitHub doesn't support some plugins)
I always wanted to use the Ghost blogging platform , but I couldn't find a cheap way to use it. But Fortunately I found a Jekyll theme called Jasper2 which helped my blog to get a Ghost like look.
• Remarkable
When writing articles on computer i use Remarkable to write.
It's easy to use and fast!
• Markor
Open Source Markdown editor for Android which I'm currently using to write this article.
I use to so much , to write todos , keep notes of some ideas and much more
Markor is a great tool!
• MrHyde
When I'm on mobile and want to publish a new article or make some changes I usually use MrHyde , an Android app for maintaining Jekyll Blogs.
That's a very useful app which even has an editor to make some instant changes.
But bad news is , it's not maintained by Developers anymore. 😟
Due to GDPR , MrHyde might not be available on Play Store in your country, so you can download it from here https://m.apkpure.com/mrhyde/org.faudroids.mrhyde
• Canva , Adobe Spark Post, GIMP
To make blog post banners and make some graphics I use often use Canva or Adobe Spark Post when using Android and when on Computer I use GIMP.
They are awesome tools.
These are the tools which I use for my blog. You can try them, I hope you'll like it.
That's it for now friends , see you next time. Till then let me know your thoughts, suggestions and questions in the comments below 👇
If You Like My Work (My Articles, Stories, Softwares, Researches and many more) Consider Buying Me A Coffee ☕ 🤗
Top comments (16)
For beginners getting their foot wet on web dev, a jekyll blog on github pages is the perfect project. For beginners on rails, maybe give middleman + middleman blog gem. Once you're feeling confident, try creating a full featured blog from scratch.
My 🛠: middleman, macdown, digital ocean, dokku
GoHugo is also best for static site pages
Your MrHyde link does not work on a German Play Store. Is that some country-related thing?
I don't think so , here's the github repo link , github.com/FauDroids/MrHyde
Play Store Link is also available There.
I get a 404 behind that.
I got it. I found an issue. github.com/FauDroids/MrHyde/issues/82
They have temporarily removed it to comply with GDPR.
As I'm from India ,GDPR doesn't apply here, so it's visible here.
Download MrHyde from here m.apkpure.com/mrhyde/org.faudroids...
Unsplash.com is fantastic for free high-quality images for banners.
When I use Adobe Spark Post or GIMP , I usually use free images from Unsplash , pixabay and pexels.
Hi. Thanks for this great post. I took some steps in trying to create myself a page.
How do I setup the Jasper2 theme on my page?
Setting up Jasper2 theme was really even tough for me, it took me a whole day to correctly configure all the things.
Hold Tight this is gonna take a little bit extra time...
I'm assuming that you're able to work with git, github and Jekyll.
First clone the Jasper 2 Github Repo locally, then delete the .git folder .
Configure the site according to you need such as changing title, author etc. and don't forget to delete all the posts.
Try running the site locally to see if everything works fine or not, if it's not messed up it should work fine.
Now initialise a git repo there and create a commit. Create a repo with such as username.github.io , where username is your GitHub username. Then push the local files to GitHub repo.
Create another branch named dev as same as master branch , both locally and on GitHub. Sync them properly.
Then go to the settings of the GitHub repo and set dev as default branch.
In local repo, open up the file Rakefile and on line 16 change
DESTINATION_BRANCH = "gh-pages"toDESTINATION_BRANCH = "master"Now save the file. And open _config.yml and on line 71 change
branch: mastertobranch: devIf you've done the setup correctly try opening, username.github.io , you'll see a simple page , but don't cheer up now hard work is still ahead. Your page is not yet working perfectly now, if you have any post now, you can't read them right now.
To make it work perfectly we have to use Travis-CI (you can use other CI , but setting up Travis-CI was easy)
First login to your Travis-CI dashboard and enable the repo you're using.
Then open this link github.com/settings/tokens and create a token (don't forget to give it a name)..
Don't close the tab for now, now head to the local repo, switch branch to dev then Open the file
.ttavis.ymland on line 20 delete thesecurething.Now open up the terminal there, and install the travis ruby gem with
gem install travis(use sudo if needed)Now, execute this command ,
travis encrypt 'GIT_NAME="YOUR_USERNAME" GIT_EMAIL="YOUR_EMAIL" GH_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN'Replace YOUR_USERNAME with your GitHub username
Replace YOUR_EMAIL with your email address you used to sign-up in GitHub
Replace YOUR_TOKEN with the token you got few minutes ago (your tab is still open)
After running this command you'll get another
securething , copy it from terminal and put it back where the old secure thing was.On line 23 of .travis.yml replace master with dev
Push the changes to GitHub , head over to Travis-CI and see if it's building your site.
I think everything is okay, Travis-CI will build your site within few minutes and your site will be live.
(I apologise if something is not working, i setup my site a long time ago and I forgot how exactly I setup it. Let me know if it works or not)
Thanks, i am going to follow your steps and will get back to you if i encounter issues
This worked!!! I'm so happy. It took me sooooo long to set jasper2 on my local disk and then it turned out it doesn't work on gh-pages... Not anymore! Thanks so much for this post!
Only thing I use for mine is Grammarly. I used to think my grammar was good!
I use it sometimes... When on PC
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Just downloaded Remarkable. Looks interesting. Thanks for the reference.