Share to blog#
Backport#
Expect to follow a merge workflow. That is, you will need to backport the content you want to publish to a more public domain (see Backporting). Start by identifying what changes you could publish:
git diff --diff-filter=ad public/master private/main
If there’s something you’d like to publish, review the rendered version in the private repository and make any last minute changes so you don’t need to do any work in your repository.
Next, switch to the public repository and pull it in:
git switch master
git restore -p -s main content/post/example.md
# (or cherry-pick if you have connect content isolated in a single commit)
Next review the diff, perhaps review the rendered version again, and push.
The public repository should only pull prepared content from the private repository. If you create new content in the public repository you have to backport it to the private repository, and do so immediately. If you don’t, you may forget which repository has the latest version of an article (the implicit assumption is the private repository always has the latest).
Whenever you switch back from the public to the private repository, acknowledge that the private repository has the latest content with a trivial merge:
git switch main
git merge -s ours public/master
See also:
Update Publication Date#
Readers (including the author) like to see the date that content was posted. The older the content, the less likely it is to be useful (most people check the year on blog posts). For example, when was this blog post put up? Docker is a fast moving technology; is this still the best practice?
As the author of a blog, when you go to the front page of your blog, can you find what you’re looking for? If you want stay in focused work on your most recently published work, you should update the date so you can easily find what you’re publishing on the front page.
Optimize for Search Engines (SEO)#
You don’t have to get your articles to show up in Google or DuckDuckGo; get a larger website to do the SEO for you by linking from them. For example, link to your articles from an SO question so you can find it in search later. With this approach you’ll just have a single level of indirection after you search.
For example, this profile links to this blog:
See “Skyscraper technique” on ahrefs: SEO Basics. If you’re reviewing a book, find someone else with solutions online, and ask them to link to your page from theirs. They may even give you direct feedback, which is what you were looking for in the first place. When you are going through the answers of others, give them feedback on their solutions, and perhaps they’ll do the same for you.
For the sake of SEO, you should generally speaking only be linking to drawings on your own website. For example, if you link to an SVG you host on your blog from Stack Overflow, your blog will likely show up higher in search engine results.