GhostBuster can export content that can be used in a Jekyll project to build a static website.
Publishing a Ghost site using Jekyll is a three-step process. First, prepare a Jekyll project, then use Ghostbuster to provide content and, finally, use Jekyll to publish it.
GhostBuster’s Jekyll filter generates content to be placed in the source directory of a Jekyll project. It produces pages from the Ghost server’s content. A complete Jekyll project will also require a site layout and Jekyll can produce this using templates. The default template is sufficient to get a site started.
Use of Jekyll is beyond the scope of this article but instructions are available on its website.
! Full instructions are available on the Jekyll website.
Jekyll requires a Ruby environment. Install the Jekyll gem:
$ gem install jekyll
You can check the installed version:
$ jekyll --version
jekyll 2.0.3 </small>
Create a new project using a template of your choosing.
$ jekyll new mysite
$ cd mysite
Test that it works
$ jekyll serve
Point a browser at the address given when the server starts, usually http://localhost:4000. Stop the server with Control+C when satisfied.
! The tasks in this section need to be completed on the Ghost server host.
Create a suitable GhostBuster environment file, for example:
Jekyll:
ghost_environment: development
destination: ssh:myuser@myhost/home/myuser/static-sites/mysite
filter: jekyll
published: true
</small>
The exported content contains Jekyll front-matter. Should you wish to specify a layout and theme, you can add parameters to the filter selection like this:
filter: jekyll?page_layout=page&theme=mytheme
Run GhostBuster to export the content. Assuming a suitable environment similar to the above example is in jekyll.yml:
ghostbuster -v -f jekyll.yml
To publish the site, Jekyll uses the files in the project’s root directory to build static HTML pages in the _site directory.
To preview the site before building it, go to the project’s directory and start the Jekyll server:
cd ~/static-sites/mysite
jekyll serve
Point a browser at the address given when the server starts; this is usually http://localhost:4000. Check it looks good then stop the server and build the static site pages:
jekyll build
The contents of the _site directory can then be loaded onto any static web server. You can run up a simple server from the build directory (cd _site) to try the static site. Either with Python:
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
or Ruby
$ ruby -run -e httpd . -p 8000
Both of these examples serve the content at http://localhost:8000.
Jakyll uses templates to create sites. Hyde is one such template and the GhostBuster site’s layout is based on it.
First, clone Hyde:
$ git clone https://github.com/poole/hyde mysite
Check all’s well
cd mysite
jekyll serve
and point your browser to http://localhost:4000.
Ghostbuster, Jekyll and Hyde documents the production of the GhostBuster website for those interested in such things.
The Jekyll front-matter includes the post title but it doesn’t allow colons in the title text. This can be remedied with a replacement expression that substitutes a hyphen.:
replace: "title:':',' - '"
The Jekyll parser can be confused by posts that contain Jekyll markup (as would happen in a post explaining how to use Jekyll markup!). The solution to this problem is apply Jekyll raw stanzas around such markup that is enclosed within double-braces. Again, a replacement expression is useful here:
replace: "markdown:/({{|}})/,'{% raw %}\\1{% endraw %}'"
It will most likely be useful to apply both expressions, like this:
replace: "markdown:/({{|}})/,'{% raw %}\\1{% endraw %}' title:':',' - '"