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Creating New Posts in Nikola

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Creating New Posts in Nikola

It's important to learn this so you're using the proper workflow. If you create a new post outside of the command line, your posts won't be properly formatted and won't be able to be published.

Step 1: Open the Command Line

Assuming you're using VSCode, open the command line by pressing Ctrl + Shift + P and typing Terminal: Create New Integrated Terminal. This will open a new terminal in the bottom of your VSCode window.

Step 2: Navigate to the Posts Directory

In the command line, type cd posts and press enter. This will navigate you to the posts directory if you're not already there.

Step 3: Create a New Post

If you're creating a markdown file, type nikola new_post -f markdown -t "Your Post Title" and press enter. If you're creating a Jupyter notebook, type nikola new_post -f ipynb -t "Your Post Title" and press enter.

Step 4: Edit Your Post

Your post will be created in the posts directory. Open it up and confirm the values at the top. You may need to set the category, description, and tags values.

Editing post parameters

Step 5: Publish Your Post

If you're using Github + Netlify ci/cd like I am, you can publish your post by pushing your changes to Github - but first be sure to build it locally and test it!

Note: You can use nikola build --clean to build and clean at the same time - do this if you find that the static file is not updating correctly in Nikola.

Open your command line tool and run the following commands:

  1. Make changes to your Nikola site
    For example, create or edit posts.

  2. Build the static site
    Run the following command in your terminal: nikola build

  3. Start a local web server
    Run the following command in your terminal: nikola serve

  4. Preview the site in your web browser
    Go to http://localhost:8000 or the address shown in your terminal.

  5. Stop the local web server
    Usually by pressing Ctrl + C in the terminal.

  6. Add the changes to Git
    Run the following command in your terminal: git add .

  7. Commit the changes with a message
    Run the following command in your terminal, replacing "Your meaningful commit message" with a description of the changes: git commit -m "Your meaningful commit message"

  8. Push the changes to the remote Git repository
    Run the following command in your terminal: git push origin main

That's it! You've created and published a new post in Nikola.