Setup a Hexo Blog

hexo
blog

This is the first post of this blog, and I will write about how to set up a blog using Hexo.

Setup

Requirements:

  • Node.js
  • git

Install Hexo

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npm install -g hexo-cli

-g flag will install Hexo and is dependencies globally, which is not recommended but is the easier way to do.

If you install the modules locally, you need to setup your $PATH to find your nodejs binaries.

I use this function function npm-do { (PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH; eval $@;) }. And you can run commands like npm-do hexo server.

Setup Hexo

On a empty folder:

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hexo init

To install a theme, like the one I am using on this blog:

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git clone https://github.com/probberechts/cactus-dark.git themes/cactus-dark

You should have something like this in your blog directory.

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➜  blog $ ls
_config.yml  db.json  node_modules  package.json  package-lock.json  scaffolds  source  themes

Change the theme property in the config.yml file. The newly installed theme also has a config.yml file, you have to edit the one located at the root of your blog.

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# theme: landscape
theme: cactus-dark

Run

You can run a local server to preview how your blog look,

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hexo server

When the server is running, Hexo will watch for file changes and update automatically so it’s not necessary to manually restart the server.

Deploy

You will need to install hexo-deployer-git to use the git deployer.

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npm install hexo-deployer-git --save

At the end of your config.yml file configure:

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deploy:
  type: git
  repo: <repository url>
  branch: [branch]

For example:

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deploy:
  type: git
  repo: https://github.com/hgranillo/hgranillo.github.io
  branch: master

And then you can run a deploy with:

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hexo deploy

This will create a directory called public and generate all the assets and html files needed to publish your site. Also will create a git repository in a directory named .deploy_git and copy all the files from public.

You will be asked for your GitHub user and password since it will try to push the commit via https.

Version control

If you want to keep track of your changes on the source files that generate your blog. You can init a git repository on the root of your blog directory.

Writing

Adding a new post

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hexo new {postname}

Your new post will be located at source/_posts/{postname}.md and you can edit it with your favorite editor, using the GitHub Markdown Syntax.

To deploy the new post, simply run: hexo generate -d

This will compile all the new assets on the public directory and upload it to GitHub.