Show Notes
Last time we learned how to install Ruby, install Bundler, install Gems, and build a very simple website using Jekyll as our static site generator into GitHub. In this installment of our Jekyll miniseries, Bart explains Jekyll's build process which is mostly automated by how you name things and the content of the files you create (like adding YAML front matter.) Then we spend some quality time bemoaning how the Jekyll developers reuse the word "assets" to mean two different things. Bart avoids some of the associated confusion by creating some naming conventions of our own. We get to do a worked example where we learn a little bit about Pages in Jekyll and do a few things the hard way that we'll redo the easy way in the coming installments.
If you're following along realtime, note that we won't be recording for 6 weeks because of some birthdays and Allison's trip to Japan.
More from Programming By Stealth
We dust off our memory from where we left off learning about Jekyll back in PBS 181 in June of last year. After some housekeeping, Bart takes us through the challenge solution from PBS 181, and then teaches us how to add metadata to our static sites. After the new material, he sets up where we're going next in learning how to organize our content with Jekyll taxonomies. He even explains what the weird term "information architecture" means in this context.
In this final episode of Tidbit 19, Bart walks us through the very few libraries he used for the final design of his Linkifier CLI App. His choices on tooling to build nice terminal commands and provide color in the terminal (like red for error messages) were based on simplicity, the fewest dependencies, and active support. It was a very fun episode to record as he wrapped the entire story up in a bow.
We're back with Part B of Tidbit 19, where Bart walks us through the architecture of his Linkifier module. He starts with the three data modeling classes that he's been using for decades, but explains how hard it is today to extract article headlines. He walks through how he developed an extraction logic but had to do it per domain. That sounds crazy but he uses surprisingly few sites for his articles for Security Bits and Let's Talk Apple.
In Part A of Tidbit 19, Bart explains the problem he needed to solve, which was bringing a script he's written up into the modern age as a JavaScript command-line interface app that can help navigate the AI landscape. As always, his explanation is geared towards teaching us the fundamentals with his problem as the example.
One of the things that helps your posts get traction is if you have a nice, pretty card that displays when you post the URL on social media. Plain blue links just don't get clicked. With WordPress and other dynamic Content Management Systems (CMSs), you can get plugins to create the pretty cards. But with Jekyll (and Hugo and other Static Site Generators), you need to build the capability into your theme. It's not hard, you just need to know what metadata to build, and of course, Bart is here to teach it to us.