Create a blog with Go and MD

I believe that everyone should at least try to have a blog or an online presence of some kind to express himself on the internet. It's the best place to network or share ideas. That's why I decided to create my personal website davidkrejci.dev and implement a blog using Go and MD. In this post I will just share how to create a simple blog.

Also I will help you add robots.txt and sitemap.xml, which help search engines to index your pages. As well as adding frontmatter for SEO.

With \(\KaTeX\) support: (inline): \(e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0\)

(block):

\[\int_a^b f(x)\,dx \]

I will be using these libraries:

goldmark

I will use Github Pages for deployment and Github Actions workflow for automatic website generation

For the file structure, create something similar to the file structure below. This will be the starting point.

file_structure
personal-web/
├─ .github/
│ └─ workflows/
│ └─ deploy.yml        # for deplyoing using github actions
├─ cmd/
│ └─ blog/
│ └─ main.go          # main Go file for blog generation
├─ templates/         # HTML templates
│ ├─ base.html        # will be the root for all of your other pages
│ ├─ post.html
│ ├─ page.html
│ └─ index.html
├─ content/           # ALL source content
│ └─ posts/
├─ static/            # will be copied over to public/
│ ├─ css/
│ └─ images/
├─ public/            # Generated output by main.go - will be done by Github Actions
│ ├─ index.html
│ ├─ posts/
│ ├─ notes/
│ └─ CNAME
├─ go.mod
├─ go.sum
├─ .gitignore
└─ README.md # documentation

Setup project

Create the github repository
- create .gitignore file with /public as its content. This will be managed using Github Actions externally, no need to commit.
Setup DNS and custom domain
- in your DNS settings at your domain provider add these records:

Type	Host	Answer
A	domainname.com	185.199.108.153
A	domainname.com	185.199.109.153
A	domainname.com	185.199.110.153
A	domainname.com	185.199.111.153
CNAME	www.domainname.com	gitUsername.github.io

more: github docs

In Github pages select Deploy from branch

Creating the template files

basic template for an HTML5 page. Can be created in VS Code by typing ! and clicking Enter.
The {{...}} is going to be used inside the main.go for injecting that part of the website with dynamic content on deploy. Though it is still a static website.

base.html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css" />
    <title>{{TITLE}}</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <nav>
      <nav>
        <a href="/">Home</a>
        <a href="/about/">About</a>
        <a href="/contact/">Contact</a>
      </nav>
    </nav>
    <main>{{CONTENT}}</main>
    <footer></footer>
  </body>
</html>