Creating My Azure Journey Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating My Azure Journey Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide

In this article, I’ll walk you through the process of creating a personal blog using GitHub Pages and Jekyll. Whether you’re an IT enthusiast like me or just someone looking to start a blog, this guide will provide you with all the necessary steps to set up your site, choose and customize a theme, create content, and host it with a custom domain.

Step 1: Setting Up the Environment

Installing Jekyll and Ruby

First, I set up a development environment on an Ubuntu virtual machine. I needed to install Ruby and Jekyll to get started. Here’s how I did it:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev

Then, I installed Jekyll:

gem install jekyll bundler

Creating a New Jekyll Site

With Jekyll installed, I created a new site to kickstart the blog setup. This was pretty straightforward:

jekyll new myblog
cd myblog

Step 2: Choosing and Configuring the Theme

Selecting and Installing the Theme

I decided to use the Minimal Mistakes theme for its clean design and rich features. Here’s how I set it up:

1. Fork the mm-github-pages-starter Repository:
   • Go to the mm-github-pages-starter GitHub repository and click the “Fork” button at the top-right corner. This will create a copy of the repository under your GitHub account.
2. Rename Your Repository:
   • Navigate to the Settings of your forked repository, scroll down to the “Repository name” section, and rename it to your-username.github.io.
3. Clone Your Repository:
   • Clone the repository to your local machine using the following command:

     git clone https://github.com/your-username/your-username.github.io
     cd your-username.github.io
     

4. Install the Dependencies:
   • Install the necessary dependencies by running:

     bundle install
     

Customizing the Theme

To make the blog feel more personal, I customized various elements in the _config.yml file, such as site details, navigation bar links, and added a personal touch with some custom CSS. Here’s a snippet of my _config.yml:

title: "Cristian´s Blog"
email: blog@schmitt-nieto.com
description: >- ## this means to ignore newlines until "baseurl:"
  Sharing my Azure expertise and IT journey on schmitt-nieto.com
github_username: schmittnieto
minimal_mistakes_skin: "dark"
search: true

author:
  name   : "Cristian Schmitt Nieto"
  avatar : "/assets/img/avatar-csn.jpeg"
  bio    : "Azure Consultant with over 10 years of IT experience, sharing insights and solutions here 😊"
  links:
    - label: "Website"
      icon: "fas fa-fw fa-link"
      url: "https://schmitt-nieto.com"
    - label: "GitHub"
      icon: "fab fa-fw fa-github"
      url: "https://github.com/schmittnieto"

With these steps, I had the Minimal Mistakes theme set up and customized for my blog.

Step 3: Creating and Structuring Content

Adding Pages and Posts

I created essential pages like aboutme.md. This page is all about introducing myself and my journey:

---
layout: single
title: "About Me"
permalink: /about/
author_profile: true
---

Hello, I'm **Cristian Schmitt Nieto**, an IT enthusiast and Azure consultant...

Then, I wrote my initial blog post to share my excitement about starting this journey:

---
layout: single
title: "Welcome to My Azure Journey"
date: 2024-07-11
categories: blog
tags: [Azure, Cloud]
excerpt: "Join me as I share my journey and experiences in the world of Azure and IT."
author_profile: true
---

## Welcome to My Azure Journey

Hello, I'm **Cristian Schmitt Nieto**, a Spanish IT enthusiast who moved to Germany...

Implementing Tags

I structured my blog to categorize posts using tags. Each tag page was dynamically created using Jekyll collections, making it easier for readers to find content on specific topics.

Step 4: Hosting with GitHub Pages

Creating a GitHub Repository

I already had a repository named schmittnieto.github.io that I had set up about a year ago for testing GitHub Pages. I decided to recycle this repository for my blog. Here’s how I pushed my local site to GitHub:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git remote add origin https://github.com/schmittnieto/schmittnieto.github.io.git
git push -u origin main

Configuring GitHub Pages

In the repository settings, I configured GitHub Pages to serve from the main branch. I also added a CNAME file to set up my custom domain:

echo "schmitt-nieto.com" > CNAME
git add CNAME
git commit -m "Add custom domain"
git push origin main

Setting Up DNS

To point my custom domain to GitHub’s servers, I added the following A records:

Type	Name	Value	TTL
A	@	185.199.108.153	3600
A	@	185.199.109.153	3600
A	@	185.199.110.153	3600
A	@	185.199.111.153	3600

And a CNAME record for www:

Type	Name	Value	TTL
CNAME	www	schmittnieto.github.io	3600

Enabling HTTPS

Finally, I enabled HTTPS in the GitHub Pages settings to ensure secure access to my blog. This happens automatically when you check the HTTPS checkbox in GitHub Pages (on your Repository) and after verifying that the DNS has been configured correctly. GitHub Pages uses Let’s Encrypt to generate this certificate, without having to do anything (at the user side) and at no cost.

Step 5: Verifying Changes Locally

Each time I make modifications to the blog, I verify them locally by running the following command. This allows me to preview the changes in a local server before pushing them to GitHub:

bundle exec jekyll serve

Conclusion

Building this blog has been an incredibly rewarding journey. It’s amazing how tools like GitHub Pages and Jekyll can transform a simple idea into a fully functional blog. I hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights and inspiration to start your own blogging journey. Stay tuned for more posts where I’ll dive deeper into Azure and share my ongoing IT adventures!