Changing blog path in Middleman May 6 2020
I use Middleman as my Static Site Generator, I have two "blogs" in my site:
blog- contains more lengthy and detailed articles.til- contains short entries that I use as a reference, and not necessarily a full well-researched article.
When I created the TIL blog I wanted it to be my repository of small notes for things I learned that day (hence the name Today I Learned).
Naming is important, and the TIL has prevented me from posting short pieces on my site because it's not something I "learned today". So I decided Notes would be a better name.
And to get started, I'll write a note on how to rename a blog on Middleman.
Table of Contents
The parts of the puzzle
We will need to change a few things to make the change.
config.rb: to make Middleman aware of the change of name.- We need to change the name of the directory to match the new name so Middleman can find it.
- Change all references in the TIL posts to reference Notes, and change the RSS feed creator to match the new name.
- Generate an
.htaccesfile that has a permanent redirect sotilcan now point tonotes.
It goes without saying that if you are using this note as a reference, create a backup of your site before making the changes. I use git for my version control on mostly everything, so I just created a new branch to test these changes. Whatever the method you choose, have some fallback.
Ok, let's begin.
Changing Middleman Configuration
This is my current configuration for the blog (in config.rb):
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activate :blog do |blog|
# This will add a prefix to all links, template references and source paths
blog.name = "til"
blog.prefix = "til"
blog.permalink = "{title}.html"
blog.layout = "articles_layout"
blog.tag_template = "tag.html"
blog.calendar_template = "calendar.html"
# Enable pagination
blog.paginate = true
end
I'll be changing the name and the prefix to notes:
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activate :blog do |blog|
# This will add a prefix to all links, template references and source paths
blog.name = "notes"
blog.prefix = "notes"
blog.permalink = "{title}.html"
blog.layout = "articles_layout"
blog.tag_template = "tag.html"
blog.calendar_template = "calendar.html"
# Enable pagination
blog.paginate = true
end
That's step one done. If I try to navigate to the old til URL, I'll see an error. To fix that, we now need to do the change the name of the directory.
Changing the directory name to use the new name
Middleman uses a specific file structure (similar to the following):
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.
├── Gemfile
├── Gemfile.lock
├── build/
│ ├── about/
│ ├── blog/
│ ├── default.html
│ ├── feed.xml
│ ├── images/
│ ├── into_account_contact/
│ ├── javascripts/
│ ├── code/
│ ├── page/
│ ├── privacy/
│ ├── sitemap.xml
│ ├── stylesheets/
│ ├── til/
│ └── til-feed.xml
├── config.rb
├── data/
│ └── sitemap.yml
├── extras/
│ └── rderik_thankfuleyes_theme.rb
├── local.config.yml
└── source/
├── _logo.erb
├── _menu.erb
├── _theme_switch.erb
├── about.html.erb
├── blog/
├── calendar.html.erb
├── default.html.erb
├── feed.xml.builder
├── images/
├── into_account_contact.html.erb
├── javascripts/
├── layouts/
├── code.html.erb
├── privacy.html.erb
├── sitemap.xml.builder
├── stylesheets/
├── tag.html.erb
├── til/
└── til-feed.xml.builder
Middleman expects to find our "notes" directory inside the source directory, but we still have til so we'll change that. We are going to also rename til-feed.xml.builder to notes-feed.xml.build. That file is in charge of producing the RSS feed for that blog.
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$ mv source/til source/notes
$ mv source/til-feed.xml.builder source/notes-feed.xml.builder
With that out of the way, we can now change the references to til in the posts.
Modifying old the posts
I'll search for til inside source/notes
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$ ag "til"
default.html.erb
4:blog: til
Great! Only one result, we only need to change the default.html.erb. I'll make the change, and that's it.
Now we need to modify our source/notes-feed.xml.build. Also the change quite easy just modify the header:
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---
blog: notes
---
xml.instruct!
xml.feed "xmlns" => "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" do
site_url = "https://rderik.com/"
xml.title "RDerik"
xml.subtitle "Simplify"
xml.id URI.join(site_url, blog.options.prefix.to_s)
xml.link "href" => URI.join(site_url, blog.options.prefix.to_s)
xml.link "href" => URI.join(site_url, current_page.path), "rel" => "self"
xml.updated(blog.articles.first.date.to_time.iso8601) unless blog.articles.empty?
xml.author { xml.name "Derik Ramirez" }
blog.articles[0..5].each do |article|
xml.entry do
xml.title article.title
xml.link "rel" => "alternate", "href" => URI.join(site_url, article.url)
xml.id URI.join(site_url, article.url)
xml.published article.date.to_time.iso8601
xml.updated File.mtime(article.source_file).iso8601
xml.author { xml.name "Derik Ramirez" }
# xml.summary article.summary, "type" => "html"
xml.content article.body, "type" => "html"
end
end
end
Ok with all that changed lest check if everything is working correctly. Visit your local environment before pushing it to the server.
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$ bundle exec middleman server
I had to update the menu. But aside from that, everything seems to work fine.
Perfect! One last search for til/ to verify everything is working correctly. Found one of my posts pointing to the til/ URL, so I change it. I don't need to make those changes, because we'll add a redirect on .htaccess but if I can make the change directly and don't have to go through the redirect, I'll prefer that.
Now, let's create our .htaccess redirect.
Adding the redirect to our .htaccess
First of all, we are going to generate our .htaccess from Middleman when building.
I'll add a file called htaccess.template.erb on our Middleman source directory. This file is the one that will contain the htaccess information. I'll base my solution on the following tutorial:
https://coderwall.com/p/daflfq/generate-htaccess-in-middleman
So my template will look like this:
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DirectoryIndex default.html
#Rewrite everything to https
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
# MOVE PERMANENTLY
# Flags: NC=NoCase (Case insensitive), L=Last, no more rules chained
RewriteRule ^til/(.*)$ /notes/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
RewriteRule ^til-feed.xml$ /notes-feed.xml [R=301,NC,L]
And my config.rb will contain the following instructions:
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page "/htaccess.template", layout:false
after_build do
File.rename "build/htaccess.template", "build/.htaccess"
end
Now time to test:
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$ bundle exec middleman build
I check that all my files are ok, and check that the .htaccess exists and has the correct content.
On my side, everything looks good. That's it. I'll deploy it to my server to test it.
Final Thoughts
Great, we managed to change the path for TIL to Notes correctly, and also we are generating the .htaccess file from Middleman. Static site generators are fun and straightforward, it is a fun way to play around with building websites. I hope you enjoyed this small note and find it useful.
If you have any comments or advice, send it my way, it's nice to hear from people that visit the site.
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