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Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

octopress.org

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Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#21

Post by imathis »

officemonkey wrote: post #15
mhansen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. Some people find that easier - I certainly feel more at home in my editor.

Hell, if you were a real hacker, you would ssh to your server with vim or emacs, write the post in markdown or somesuch, and have your the blosxom-inspired clone you wrote yourself serve up the HTML. The real reason it's "for hackers" is for marketing. That and improving its chances for a front-page mention here.

The tagline has nothing to do with Hacker News, the fact that you would even say that is amusing.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#22

Post by ojilles »

imathis wrote: post #16
microtonal wrote: post #10

Octopress is based on Jekyll, however, it is not exactly clear to me what it adds to Jekyll. Is it the extra plugins? Is it Rake-driven management? Reading through the documentation quickly, it seems to add a lot of complexity compared to plain Jekyll. A comparison with Jekyll sans Octopress would be appreciated!

Jeykll is a static generator which has simple support for blogging. If you get started with Jeykll, you still have to write all your own HTML, CSS, etc. Getting a Jekyll blog from just a generator to the point where it's something you'd be proud to post takes a good chunk of time and many developers don't want to deal with designing their blog. Octopress is HTML, Sass, Javascript and a set of Rake tasks and plugins f…

I'm using Jekyll, and it took me roughly 3 nights to get it all up and running. Now looking at Octopress, they've literally done a couple of things I did myself to Jekyll (new post rake task, uploading to production, etc. etc.) So if I'd start from scratch today, I would take a good look at Octopress indeed.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#24

Post by imathis »

m_eiman wrote: post #7
keenerd wrote: post #2

So what makes it for hackers? The Github backend? Including a plugin for code by default? http://redraftable.com is a blog engine for hackers, other than the author won't release sources while the project is still immature.

Probably that it takes six pages of instructions to get it up and running.

Everything is explained thoroughly but there are really only 3 steps, all on the first page http://octopress.org/docs/setup

1. Clone Octopress 2. Bundle install 3. Rake install

The reset of the documentation is about deploying, customizing, and updating.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#25

Post by imathis »

masnick wrote: post #19
microtonal wrote: post #10

Octopress is based on Jekyll, however, it is not exactly clear to me what it adds to Jekyll. Is it the extra plugins? Is it Rake-driven management? Reading through the documentation quickly, it seems to add a lot of complexity compared to plain Jekyll. A comparison with Jekyll sans Octopress would be appreciated!

From whatI can tell from the git repository ( https://github.com/imathis/octopress/ ), Octopress adds two major things to Jekyll: a bunch of automation (via the Rakefile) and a default theme. Reading through the Rakefile, the automation actually looks pretty useful. For example, you can a new post with rake new_post["title here"] and Octopress will generate a properly named file for you with the correct yaml front ma…

The default theme is almost identical to the Octopress home page. The only differences are the color scheme and header logo.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#26

Post by imathis »

jonbro wrote: post #9

can someone summarize why I should move to this from Jekyll? The website is a bit unclear on that.

If you're already using Jekyll, you might consider moving to Octopress if you like the design, plugins, or rake tasks. It's MIT licensed, so if you would rather just snag those and integrate them into your existing blog that's fine too.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#27

Post by sathyabhat »

imathis wrote: post #21
officemonkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, if you were a real hacker, you would ssh to your server with vim or emacs, write the post in markdown or somesuch, and have your the blosxom-inspired clone you wrote yourself serve up the HTML. The real reason it's "for hackers" is for marketing. That and improving its chances for a front-page mention here.

The tagline has nothing to do with Hacker News, the fact that you would even say that is amusing.

It's got nothing to do with HN, true, but "X blog engine for Hackers!!!11" grabs more eyeballs than "x blog engine"

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#29

Post by imathis »

[deleted] wrote: post #18

[deleted]

There's no official affiliation with Github. I started thinking through the branding for Octopress in 2009 when it first came out. I was looking for a good mascot and around the same time David Lanham did his 'Bubble Bay' design for a firefox campaign http://davidlanham.com/art/bubblebay/

I started thinking that an Octopus would be a great mascot. They're intelligent, flexible, and have loads of personality. And I asked David to do the artwork for the logo.

The 'press' part was taken from Wordpress, but mainly because I really like how subtly different it is from Octopus.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#30

Post by imathis »

corin_ wrote: post #6
mhansen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. Some people find that easier - I certainly feel more at home in my editor.

That's the idea of Jekyll, which is what this is based on. Doesn't explain what makes this a "blogging framework for hackers" (other than their choice of using Jekyll).

Check out the plugins for sharing code http://octopress.org/docs/blogging/code This was obsessively designed with hackers in mind.
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