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 title: Creating this site
 description: My journey with AsciiDoc and Hugo, and how we got here
-date: 2022-07-19
-draft: true
+date: 2022-09-14
 ---
 :toc:
 = Creating this site
 Marko Korhonen <marko@korhonen.cc>
-v1.0, 2022-07-19
+v1.0, 2022-09-14
 
 == Introduction
-As seems to be customary on technology related blogs, the first post about creating the blog itself.
-So here we are, this is the first post in my blog, detailing the steps I took to arrive here.
+As seems to be customary on technology related blogs, the first post about
+creating the blog itself. So here we are, this is the first post in my blog,
+detailing the steps I took to arrive here.
+
+== Assessing the options
+I first got interested in static site generators years ago when my friend
+Fatih built link:https://teaddict.net[his site] with
+link:https://jekyllrb.com[Jekyll]. It felt very refreshing at the time
+since I was hosting my homepage on WordPress, which always seemed a little
+too bloated and overkill for my needs.
+
+=== Jekyll
+I tried setting up Jekyll multiple times during 2021 but got discouraged
+by the build process which involved specifying all sorts of bundles and
+gems for just for building my site (I never was very into Ruby to begin with).
+I also got to debug all sorts of build problems which were a result of my
+very specific requirements for the blog. I added multiple plugins which didn't
+work together very well. The biggest hurdle to overcome was the fact that I
+wanted to use link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AsciiDoc[AsciiDoc]
+as the mark-up language and Jekyll doesn't natively support this so I had to
+use a link:https://github.com/asciidoctor/jekyll-asciidoc[plugin] to bring
+in the functionality. This plugin specifically didn't seem to work very well
+with the other plugins I required and the theme I had selected.
+
+Anyways, I never got further with setting up the site so I put the project
+on the backburner. From the inception of the
+link:https://korhonen.cc[korhonen.cc] domain in late 2020 until summer 2022
+the main domain just showed a 404 error. I had a lot of self-hosted
+applications only on subdomains.
+
+=== Hugo
+After discovering link:https://gohugo.io[Hugo] I got very exited immediately.
+It seemed to be an answer to all of my problems. The main benefits were
+
+* Single binary
+* Support for AsciiDoc out of the box
+
+Because of this, I got a basic site setup within a matter of minutes. No
+more fiddling with bundles and gems. I also didn't require any other
+plugins since Hugo seemed to support everything I wanted natively.
+
+== Configuration
+I opted to use the link:https://github.com/hossainemruz/toha[Hugo Toha] theme
+for my site since it seemed to do well all of the things I wanted to
+accomplish with this site
+
+* A website where I can add any number of static pages (not blog posts)
+** link:/pgp[Information page about my PGP key]
+** link:/korhonen_aur[Information page about my Arch Linux repository]
+* link:/[Introduction and portfolio]
+* link:/posts[A blog]
+
+The configuration of Hugo and the theme took quite a while but was well
+worth it. I now have a beautiful multipurpose site which is easy to maintain
+and expand.
+
+=== Commenting system
+I wanted to add support for users to add comments on the blog. While I usually
+self-host everything I can, this time I landed with
+link:https://giscus.app[Giscus]. It's built upon the GitHub discussions
+platform so all I needed to do was to create a repository in GitHub with
+the discussions feature enabled and configure it in Toha (the Hugo theme
+I selected).
+
+I went through all of the options that Toha supported but none of theme were
+self-hostable and I didn't feel like implementing support for a different
+platform myself. This might be a cool future project at some point though.
+
+== Automating the build process
+While I was setting up this site, I found out about
+link:https://www.drone.io[Drone] which seems to suit my needs beautifully.
+I have tried link:https://www.jenkins.io[Jenkins] in the past but didn't
+find it very easy to work with and I didn't like the fact that it was so heavy
+on resources.
+
+Setting up Drone took only about 30 minutes thanks to the excellent
+documentation and native link:https://gitea.io[Gitea] Support
+(which I was already using for some years before this). Setting up the
+pipeline took a little bit more trial and error but in the end it proved
+to be pretty easy.
+
+You can see the pipeline
+link:https://git.korhonen.cc/FunctionalHacker/korhonen.cc/src/branch/main/.drone.yml[here]
+and my Gitea/Drone configuration
+link:https://git.korhonen.cc/FunctionalHacker/dotfiles/src/branch/main/docker/gitea/docker-compose.toml[here].
+
+== Future plans
+I don't plan to become a regular blogger any time soon but if I find
+something that I think would be of value to other people, I will write
+about it here if I find the time and energy.
+
+I really enjoy tinkering
+with Linux and self-hosting applications on my server so I might write some
+tutorials about these topics in the future. I'm also a passionate
+link:https://neovim.io[NeoVim] user so I might write a post about
+link:https://git.korhonen.cc/FunctionalHacker/dotfiles/src/branch/main/home/.config/nvim[my configuration]
+sometime soon.
+
+Just for fun, here is a screenshot of me writing this blog post. How meta
+of me 😃
+
+.A screenshot of me writing a blog post about this blog
+image::assets/writing_blogpost_neovim_hugo.png[Me writing this blog post]