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How This Site Is Hosted

Overview

This is a static site compiled from markdown by Material For MkDocs. All of the pages are created and edited using Obsidian. The site files are pushed to a GitHub repo and then hosted using Vercel. Alternatively, it could also be hosted on GitHub Pages. Well, it's a static site, it could be hosted anywhere.

Bar the domain, it is entirely free to create and host.

I was originally going to build my own markdown to html static site builder, and I did actually start doing so, but decided that the time sink of implementing all of the necessary features wasn't worth it when I could spend that same amount of time populating this site with actual content. I may still revisit implementing my own homebrew builder at a later date.

Setup

MkDocs

Setup for a range of markdown extensions was followed as per the Material for MkDocs Reference Documentation. Additional CSS styling was also created the theme the site.

Obsidian

I could have used any markdown editor; Obsidian is just what I know and already use. It allows for managing and writing up content in a WYSIWYG interface. Need a new page? Create a new note and start writing. Simple.

The primary issue is that Obsidian, by default, formats markdown files slightly differently than what MkDocs expects, so a few changes to the default settings needed to be made. Primarily:

  • [[wikilinks]] need to be disabled.
  • Note title ≠ note file name. This forces note titles to be written as top-level headings in each note.
  • Files need to be saved to the correct location as per the MkDocs file structure.

Hosting

Vercel is linked to the site's GitHub repo (which needs to be public). Every time a commit is pushed, it is automatically detected and the live site updates in a matter of seconds. Domains can be bought and applied through Vercel directly.