...the hard part is writing the words.
Here's a basic step-by-step to creating the most basic dev blog that looks reasonably OK. No, we aren't using JavaScript. No, we aren't using a template. Yes, signing up for a WordPress instance is probably easier. 😅
1. Create your .github.io repository
You get a ready-made GitHub Pages <username>.github.io domain that's perfect for your basic website needs. Just create a new repository like jcbhmr.github.io but replace jcbhmr with your GitHub username.
2. Enable GitHub pages
In your repository settings you need to turn on GitHub Pages to make it pull Jekyll content (that's the magic✨ default GitHub Pages build tool) from your GitHub repository.
You can find the menu to turn on GitHub Pages in the Settings tab of your repository under the Pages sidebar menu.
Make sure you set the source branch!
After you hit Save you should be able to visit <username>.github.io as a website. (It may take a minute to deploy things so be patient.)
3. Setup a post index page theme
The default Primer GitHub Pages theme is nice... but it lacks a homepage index of your most recent blog posts. 😢 IMO the best path forward is to switch to another default theme: the builtin default Jekyll Minima theme.
To do that, create a _config.yml file in your GitHub repository that you created in step 1 and add the following line:
_config.yml
remote_theme: jekyll/minima
Why again do you need to do this? Because Minima theme has a builtin no-config default blog feed on the homepage that makes it perfect for near-zero-config setups.
We also need to use this Minima theme for our homepage. You'll need to also create an index.md file:
index.md
---
permalink: /
layout: home
---
Any **content** you [put here](#) will appear _on the homepage_
<span style="color: red;">above the recent posts section</span>.
4. Write your content!
Make a _posts/ folder and then create a _posts/2020-01-01-hello-world.md document. (Change the date to reflect your date) Add some content to it! Just make sure it has some YAML frontmatter specifying it's layout: post and title: Your text here.
_posts/2020-01-01-hello-world.md
---
layout: post
title: Hello world!
---
<mark>Hello world!</mark> This is some [blog](#) _post_ **content**.
## I'm another section header
Now you have your new fancy dev blog post on your own website! 🥳 And it only took a few files!
It should look something like this
Or just use something else
You can always use WordPress, Google Docs Publishing, a GitHub Gist, DEV.to, or any other platform that you feel comfortable with. Once you get something on a (digital) paper somewhere so that you can show someone or post a link somewhere, that's OUTSTANDING already! 🎉