Kodethon Blog

This is the official blog of the Kodethon technical assessment service. It is a jekyll blog and it follows the conventional structure.

Main Dependencies

• ruby 2.3.0
• jekyll 3.2
• bundler 1.14.6

We specify additional dependencies in the Gemfile. To install those dependencies, you need to run bundle install in the repo folder.

Development

When want to make changes to this blog, this is how we do it.

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/kodethon/kodethon.github.io

2. Install gems

bundle install

3. Run jekyll server in development mode

jekyll server --config _config.yml,_config_dev.yml --drafts --watch

4. Make changes: new posts, edit post, new page, change CSS, etc.

Disqus Comments

We added Disqus comments to each post. To add Disqus comments, I followed the instructions given in the Disqus site after clicking Settings > "Add Disqus to Site".

Roughly:

1. I logged into my Disqus account
2. I followed the disqus official documentation for integrating into Jekyll

Our shortname is kodethon. If you are using this blog as the start of your own blog, make sure that you get your own shortname and edit the disqus value in _config.yml.

In adding comments to each posts, I also found additional resources helpful.

1. http://sgeos.github.io/jekyll/disqus/2016/02/14/adding-disqus-to-a-jekyll-blog.html

Bitly

To track clicks, we use Bitly links.

1. Log into Bitly account.
2. Create Bitly link for URL.
3. Add "-kodethon" to custom bitly url.
4. In the front matter of the post, I add a bitly property.

Our Bitly username is kodethon. Get your own.

Production

Previously, we used to deploy this site as a Docker container in our server behind a nginx-proxy. Now, we simply deploy via Github pages.

To deploy:

1. git commit changes
2. git push changes

This works for us because this repo is currently the special USERNAME.github.io repo. In other words, it is a user/organization Github pages site. If it were a project site, we would hve to push to the gh-pages.

Email

Through our blog, we can also generate newsletters. We created a TinyLetter account. Our username is kodethon. Again, if you are using this blog as the start of your own blog. Get your own username.

To Email Newsletter:

1. In TinyLetter, click Compose.
2. Click on Source View.
3. Copy page source from newsletter.
4. Paste into: https://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css/
5. Pase output source into TinyLetter.

Source Code Organization

Post Categories/Tags

These are the categories/tags we are currently using. If you write a post and it needs a new category, add it here to document it.

• Announcements
  • General
  • Bug fix
• New Feature
  • Embed
• New Environment
  • Prolog
• Tutorials
  • C
  • C++
  • Java
  • Prolog

Media Assets

Our media assets can be put in their respective folders.

• videos: Put video files in the videos/ folder.
• images: Put image files in the images/ folder.

_includes

head.html: You may want to modify this file to include external CSS or JS files.

Note: The order of include matters to Bootstrap.

Acknowledgements

• Social Media Share Bar for Jekyll blog/website