Another day another fumble

Last time I had a short TODO-list at the end of my post. How many have I managed to tick off?

1. Add pages for posts by year, category and tags

The “Posts by year” bit is embarrassing, because I can’t remember how I ended up finding the solution. I think I ended up reading the sources of several blogs that had the features I was aiming for and trying things at random. This bothers me, because I don’t really understand how it works.

The file I needed to edit was _data/navigation.yml:

main:
- title: "Posts"
    url: /posts/
- title: "Tags"
    url: /tags/
- title: "About"
    url: /about/

As far as I can see, there is no place to define the behavior of the “Posts” page. Add it to “Navigation” and go. I may be mistaken.

On my todo-list there is also:

1. Figure out what’s up with the apostrophes around the file name for the “branches and breakage” post in the output of ls _posts command earlier

   • This was actually really simple. Some time ago, the age old command ls was updated with a feature to improve visibility of the output. The apostrophes are there to tell you that “this is a file and it has spaces in it”

2. Read slowly and carefully

   • I’m not there yet…

3. Take notes ALL the time, both while reading and of every change and command. Maybe I’ll finally learn something. Or at least finally learn…

   • no not there either

4. Don’t use the IDE (VS Code) for things that can be done on the command line before

   • you know how those things work
   • you know how the IDE works

5. And maybe also get vim (neovim, actually) working as editor in VS Code. Or take a pause from VS Code and just use vim for a while. Those things might also be the subject for upcoming posts.

   • I have installed the Neo Vim plugin, and so far I’m pleased. There are som quirks to get to know, but then I’m not that fluent in vi-like editing yet, anyway…

6. Also: Increase the post width. It’s cramped

   • Fixed here: index.html

     Also: explain how? Yes! Add the following line:

     classes:wide

Things I also learned:

• Non-commited changes can be commited from any branch. Well at least non-added changes. Need to check again. Just make sure you check branch status before committing

• Jekyll can keep a “draft post” folder. Handy! Create folder _drafts and stuff your drafts and work in progress there. To test, serve your site with the –drafts flag.

• Version requirements and rolling releases are a bitch. Arch is currently at 3.0.0, but github.io (or the version of Jekyll supported by GitHub) does not yet support it. How did I solve this? That is a story for the next post.