crimsontome.com/posts/making-your-own-blog.md

title	description	date	tags	layout
Making your own blog	Second post, how to make your own blog using GitHub, Netlify and Eleventy.	2021-10-16	second post github netlify web development	layouts/post.njk

Please note that I will be updating this as I go along. This is my first time using Netlify, as such I lack a lot of experience using the service so far. I have been using GitHub consistently since September 2021 so I am still relatively new to how everything works.

Still here?

Well, let's begin.

First of all, if you want to use GitHub as the source for your code you'll need a repository(repo). If you're reading this then you may be new to GitHub like I was not so long ago.

Creating the repo

You can either create your own from scratch and setup a framework later

• Go to https://github.com/new
• Under Repository name enter what you want the repo to be called e.g. my-blog
• Under Description you can add a bit about your site, for example what it is about and how it is made
• Make sure Public is ticked, it should be by default
• You can tick Add a README file to go into more detail about your code if you wish. It is not completely necessary but may be useful for explaining your repo to other users or those that are interested but don't understand what exactly is going on by viewing the code itself
• Click Create repository

OR

You can create your repo using a template (what I did) e.g Eleventy's base template

• Go to https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog/generate
• Under Repository name enter what you want the repo to be called e.g. my-blog
• Under Description you can add a bit about your site, for example what it is about and how it is made
• Make sure Public is ticked, it should be by default
• Keep Include all branches unticked (it's what I did, so some things may be different if you decide to tick it, I can't help with some things at that point)

GitHub will then generate your repo using the eleventy base blog template. There will be a list of files generated, an important one being README.md. As the README states, you will need to Edit _data/metadata.json. You will find this at https://github.com/your-github-name/your-repo-name/blob/master/_data/metadata.json. But first, make sure you commit your changes if you've made any and let's head over to Netlify.
You can use your email or GitHub login (I'd recommend using GH as that is what I did). Once logged in go to https://app.netlify.com/start, choose GitHub as the option for Continuous Deployment then select your repo you have created with the elventy template. Then click Deploy site. Head to https://app.netlify.com/sites/user-name/settings/general#site-details. For now Netlify provides you with its own subdomain at subdomain.netlify.app but you can change it by presssing Change site name.
Back to GitHub, remember metadata.json? You'll need to fill that in now to customise the template to match you.

{
  "title": "Blog title",
  "url": "https://subdomain-you-chose.netlify.app/",
  "language": "en",
  "description": "add a description here",
  "feed": {
    "subtitle": "add a subtitle here",
    "filename": "feed.xml",
    "path": "/feed/feed.xml",
    "id": "https://subdomain-you-chose.netlify.app/"
  },
  "jsonfeed": {
    "path": "/feed/feed.json",
    "url": "https://subdomain-you-chose.netlify.app/feed/feed.json"
  },
  "author": {
    "name": "your-name",
    "email": "your-email,
    "url": "hhtps://subdomain-you-chose.netlify.app/about-me/"
  }
}

Make sure to commit your changes and then netlify should automatically rebuild your site. It shouldn't take more than a minute to do so.
You can add an about me page by editing /about/index.md. Leave the stuff surrounded by.

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