Re: An Org-mode-based blogging engine?

[Vinícius Moraes]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> Hello fellow Orgers,
>
> I'm preparing to set up a new blog, and I'd like to have a fully
> Org-mode-based workflow.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to do everything
> - including publishing the posts - from within Emacs.
>
> I know about things like "Org publish" and ox-hugo, though I never used
> them - and there are probably others - but I'm asking specifically about
> two things:
>
> A. other people's experiences with similar workflows, and
> B. tool/workflow recommendations.
>
> Here are my requirements, in no particular order.
>
> 1. I want the blog to be fully static HTML+CSS, with a tiny sprinkling
> of (my custom) JS.
>
> 2. I want to publish a whole set of HTML files from a single Org mode
> file.  I will need to preserve internal links (so that I can link to
> another headline and the result will be one post linking to another),
> and of course I will need external links.  The blog will live on some
> server I will have ssh access to, so for publishing it should be enough
> to scp some files somewhere.
>
> 3. I want to be able to fully customize the HTML produced.  I want it to
> be as simple as possible (but see below).  I will also need it to be put
> in some kind of a template, so that every page will contain things like
> a header, footer and a sidebar.
>
> 4. I am going, though, to need some custom "blocks" - in HTML parlance,
> <div>s and possibly also <span>s.  I want to be able to mark them up
> somehow in my Org source and get <div class="..."> and <span
> class="...">.  Reusing existing markup (like _underline_, which I'm not
> going to use) is not enough - I will need more than a dozen of those
> custom classes.
>
> Any thought, suggestions, recommendations?

I recommend using Hugo, since it supports org-mode files
directly. Setting up Hugo to meet your requirements can be done in
many ways, and you can find almost everything you need in their
documentation. Although there is a bit of a learning curve, it's nothing
that an Emacs user can't handle.

For integration and workflow, I've been using the easy-hugo package. It
has everything I've needed so far, from writing to publishing to
managing. While Hugo does support org files, there are some cases where
you need to tinker a bit to make it work properly. For example, the
other day, I was trying to publish a poem using verse blocks and it
didn't work. All I had to do was trying another way, which was adding
"//" at the end of each verse to have proper line breaking.

You'll learn many little things like this through experience, and if
needed, you can always use HTML/Go code to complement org-mode features.

Regardless of which tool path you choose, blogging with org-mode is a
great experience.

Enjoy the journey! :)

Best,
-- 
Vinícius Moraes
eternodevir.com