FAQ

How do I add a post to the blog?

Just create a new .markdown file in the style of the existing files under _posts. Your post should be written in standard markdown in this file. Make sure that layout: post, title: <your title>, date: <publication date>, where

• The name of your .markdown file should be in the format YYYY-MM-DD-<short_name>.markdown, where the <short_name> should be all lowercase and use _ for spaces.
• <publication date> should be of the form YYYY-MM-DD 8:00:00 +0000 format. Note that the time component does not matter, so as a standard, we will default to 8:00:00 +0000.
• title should make use of standard title capitalization style (e.g. following APA standards). This means capitalizing all words except for standard conjunctions, prepositions under 4 letters, and proper nouns that take on lowercase by definition. This site will help you automatically follow this convention: https://capitalizemytitle.com/.

How do I preview my post locally?

You will need to install jekyll.

🚨🍎🚨 If you use macOS: Note that jekyll uses ruby, but is incompatible with the outdated version of ruby that ships with macOS. This guide details how you can install the latest ruby and ruby version control tools to enable building jekyll locally.

• cd into this repo's and run the following: jekyll serve.
• You can then visit the blog locally at localhost:4000. This will build and serve your post, while watching + building whenever you change files. If for some reason changes are not reflected, manually rebuild by issuing the command jekyll build.

How do I add images and videos to my post?

If your post has static assets like images or video, do the following:

• Create a new folder under (assets/post_assets)[https://github.com/ucl-dark/blog.ucldark.com/tree/master/assets/post_assets] with the same name as the <short_name> component of your post .markdown, i.e. without the time stamp part. Your post assets like images and videos will go in here.
• Link in images the same way you normally would in markdown: ![<placeholder image description>](/assets/post_assets/<short_name>/<your_image_name>.png).
• Link in videos as follows (but ideally make the video file < 10 MB):

<video width="100%" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
  <source src="/assets/post_assets/<short_name>/<your_video_name>.mp4">
</video>

• Whenever possible, use .mp4 instead of .gif, which are much larger files.

My post already exists at another URL. How can I make a post that redirects to that URL?

• Create a post .markdown as usual, but with an empty post body below the config section.
• Add an additional config, redirect_url: <absolute_url> below the title config. The post will redirect to the <absolute_url> of your existing post.

How do I publish the new post?

The blog is automatically rebuilt whenever the master branch is updated. So to update the blog with your post do the following:

git add . -A
git commit -m '<your commit message describing your post>'
git push origin master

As such, please use a separate branch to manage any intermediate work on your post and merge in your final changes before pushing to master!

For additional questions, suggestions, and feedback, get in touch with Minqi.