Technical Blog

Requirements
- Local set up
Project directory structure

This repository contains the source code for https://docs.rackspace.com/blog/ website.

The website is written in AsciiDoc, generated by using Hugo, and hosted on GitHub.

Requirements

The Docs site runs on top of Hugo. To run an instance locally you need to either install Hugo and AsciiDoctor locally.

Local set up

Install Hugo and AsciiDoctor locally

If you want to install the required tools, you must first install Hugo and have the hugo command available in your PATH. Use Hugo version 0.78 or newer. You can install hugo by using your system’s package manager. For example, on OSX, type the following command to install hugo with Homebrew:

brew install hugo

For more information about how to install Hugo please see the installation documentation.

You also need Asciidoctor and Gem to run the local Docs site. Install those tools and verify them by running the following commands:

install asciidoctor: sudo gem install asciidoctor -N verify asciidoctor -v verify gem —help

Alternatively, use the npm install command to install Asciidoctor by using Ruby Gem and Bundler. You need to have the gem command in your path. For more information, see the Ruby Gem installation docs.

Build the documentation locally

Build your content locally and check for build errors.

Change directory to the root directory of your document repository.
Run the following command:

npm run build:local

Start a local web server

To preview documents in a web browser such as Chrome, start the Hugo server on your device.

Hugo has a live serve command that runs a small, lightweight web server on your computer so you can test your site locally without needing to upload it anywhere. As you make changes to files in your project, it rebuilds your project and reloads the browser for you.

To start the Hugo server, perform the following steps:

Change directory to the root directory of your document repository.
Run the following command:

npm start

The Hugo server displays some messages while it starts up. The last line should be:

Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1) Press Ctrl+C to stop

You should now be able to access the technical blog using the generated link. You cannot use the Technical blog dropdown to navigate to your new article. To access your article:

Select the link generated by Hugo.
In the search bar type '/blog' after the existing local address.
Copy and paste the information from the slug section of your metadata after the '/blog/' text.

This running instance should support live reload. Changes you make to files should be automatically updated in your running instance.

Some files may not be supported for live reload. If you are not automatically seeing your changes live you may need to restart the server. You can restart the server by pressing 'ctrl-c' and running npm start again.

If everything is working as expected you should see output similar to the following example:

                   | EN-US
-------------------+--------
  Pages            |  1217
  Paginator pages  |   154
  Non-page files   |  1292
  Static files     |    30
  Processed images |     0
  Aliases          |   354
  Sitemaps         |     1
  Cleaned          |     0

Built in 3116 ms
Watching for changes in /rackerlabs/technical-blog/{archetypes,assets,content,i18n,layouts,package.hugo.json,package.json,postcss.config.js,static}
Watching for config changes in /rackerlabs/technical-blog/config.toml
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from memory
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at //localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop

You should now be able to access the technical blog, for example, from: http://localhost:1313/blog/