This guide will help you write your first blog post using basic AsciiDoc syntax. It also describes blog paramters used to control aspects of post sort order, and category tags. Read this guide if you are new to writing AsciiDoc mark-up, or have not used HubPress to create a blog post before.
|
Note
|
If you can write a text email, you can create great blog posts with AsciiDoc and HubPress. |
If you have never used AsciiDoc before to write content, the AsciiDoctor Writer’s Guide should be your first stop in your journey. The guide provides both basic and advanced mark-up examples for you to copy and use.
HubPress Editor displays the AsciiDoc code on the left, and the live preview on the right.
HubPress uses the Asciidoctor Article container to structure posts.
The blog title is always Level 1 in an AsciiDoc post. For example, = Blog Title sets the name of the Blog Post to Blog Title when published.
|
Important
|
A = Blog Title is required for the blog post to save. This is one of the most common support cases raised on the issue tracker.
|
If you want a first-level heading you use == First Level Heading, and so on to create other nested headings.
HubPress allows you to alter characteristics of each blog post using attributes.
If you want to add a cover image to your Blog Post, set the hp-image attribute.
= Blog Title
:hp-image: a-cover-image.jpg|
Note
|
Because HubPress defaults the /images directory as the root for all images, you only need to declare the filename of the image. Because of this, you may want to consider creating a /covers directory in your repository to group the cover images together.
Naming the cover images consistently will make it very easy to apply to every post. If you have a theme to your blog, this allows your readers to get a visual clue as to what the post is about.
|
The themes that currently support blog post cover images are:
-
Saga
By default, the publication date is the date you created the Blog Post. You can force the publication date by adding the :published_at: attribute.
= Blog Title
:published_at: 2015-01-31|
Note
|
Categories are not supported. |
Add tags by using the hp-tags attribute.
= Blog Title
:hp-tags: HubPress, Blog, Open Source,Specify an alternative title using the hp-alt-title attribute.
The alternative title is used instead of the HTML file name generated by HubPress.
= 大千世界
:hp-alt-title: My English TitleSpecify how code samples containing AsciiDoc markup patterns are processed. Some code samples may contain delimited asterix symbols that are interpreted like processing instructions by Asciidoctor.
If you find that your code samples are not displaying correctly, specify :compat-mode: true to disable processing in code blocks.
= Blog Title
:compat mode: true
`egrep '\(\ *\)\ *\{' /var/log/nginx/*`If :compat-mode: was not specified here, the code sample would render like this:
egrep '\(\ \)\ *\{' /var/log/nginx/
For more information about :compat-mode:, see the AsciiDoctor Migration Guide.
You can use Git command line or a Git app to add images to your blog posts:
-
Commit images to the
/imagesdirectory. -
In your blog post, use the following basic AsciiDoc syntax:
image::<filename>[] -
See http://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-writers-guide/ for complex examples of Image syntax.
If you are embedding images from a hosted source (such as instagram, another GitHub repository, or any photo hosting site) put the full URL to the image in place of the <filename>.
image::http://<full path to image>[]
You can use a single issue as an image container for a blog post containing many issues by uploading multiple images as comments. Alternatively, you can use multiple issues to store individual images.
Whatever works best for you, and your organization style.
Watch this five minute video for a demonstration about how to use GitHub Issues and Cloud Hosting services as embed targets, and some bonus tips on using the image AsciiDoc syntax.
HubPress allows you to embed video and audio directly into your blog post by using a quick notation in your blog post.
You don’t need to declare the full URL: all you need is the unique video ID.
video::[unique_youtube_video_id][youtube | vimeo]video::KCylB780zSM[youtube]video::67480300[vimeo]While YouTube and Vimeo have pre-defined short notations in Asciidoctor, other services like BandCamp or SoundCloud require a block passthrough to be declared. Block passthroughs are described in detail in the Asciidoctor User Manual.
++++
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 470px;" src="//bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2869458964/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://mocamborecords.bandcamp.com/album/showdown">SHOWDOWN by THE MIGHTY MOCAMBOS</a></iframe>
++++|
Tip
|
The trick with block passthroughs (no matter the type) is to ensure any src value does not contain a mixed protocol.
For example if the src link contained http and your blog uses a https protocol, the embed would fail.
|
Some <iframe> elements provided by these sites may include the protocol, and you will need to strip the protocol out when declaring passthrough blocks.
The source link is essentially an absolute target to the hosted file on the service.
The // opens the pointer to the file.
See this issue which describes the journey to discovering how to embed content other than Vimeo and YouTube content.
If something is not working as you expect, some of these tips may help.
Sometimes the HubPress local database becomes out-of-sync with your published blog. This can happen because you are editing your blog on your PC, then switch over to your tablet.
HubPress works on a locally-stored database specific to your Browser, so if you switch devices — and subsequently switch browsers — you lose the synchronicity between browsers.
To return your instance of HubPress to that of the published blog, clear the browser Cache and Data in Settings > Apps. When you do this, HubPress is forced to rebuild the local database, and will reflect the state of the blog in GitHub.
There are some commonly-asked questions in the issue tracker that are worth calling out here.
At the moment, Pull Requests (PRs) for HubPress should be pushed to the /Development branch of HubPress.
It is best practice to create an issue in the issue tracker, so that the idea you have is tracked in the community. Just link your bug reference in the PR, and we can take a look at your motivation behind the Pull Request.
Don’t worry about a bug for simple stuff like corrections to URLs, minor typos in the READMEs, and other similar issues: these type of issues require no tracker as they do not require any community vote or agreement.
The team is really grateful for any contributions you make, no matter how small.
You can technically use the same HubPress instance with multiple authors, but it requires some trust from the other users you give access.
There are some points to consider before opening up your blog instance to other contributiors.
- Attribution
-
There is no way to attribute a blog user to individual posts at this stage, unless you perhaps use a :hp-tags: category for the name of each contributor (a crude work-around at best).
- Global User Name
-
Blog posts are attributed to the primary GitHub User who configures the Settings page. If someone you invite to co-author your blog saves changes to the Settings page, all blog posts will have that author as the person who wrote blog posts in your HubPress instance.
If you have a close, trusted team of bloggers who just want to write posts, then you can use HubPress together.
Understand that HubPress is really only suited to single bloggers, and does not offer and GitHub authentication intelligence for blogging teams.
HubPress only supports the HTML5 backend.
Specifying other backend types will result in an error similar to:
Uncaught RuntimeError: asciidoctor: FAILED: missing converter for backend 'deckjs'. Processing aborted.
If you do want to use a different backend to process your AsciiDoc files, the Asciidoctor User Guide can help you work out the backend that is right for you, for use with the asciidoctor command-line script.
If you want a near WYSIWYG interface to edit your AsciiDoc files, applications like Atom Editor or AsciidocFX Editor are excellent choices.
Thanks to Jared Morgan for initially tidying up the README you see here, and continuing to be the "docs guy" for HubPress. Thanks to takkyuuplayer, hinaloe to have translated the README into Japanese
If you love HubPress, and you want to support the team responsible for developing the app, you can use Gratipay 