What this post is: #

This post is just going to be a log of events along with my thoughts. Nothing preachy.

Q1 2024: #

  • I dove into the productivity, PKM rabbit hole around Feb last year (right now it is Jan 1, 2025)
  • Checked out Obsidian, Bear (for the apple ecosystem), Notion, Apple notes, Capacities, Logseq
  • Started using Obsidian and Bear quite heavily, alternating between the two
  • Spent a LOT of time customizing Obsidian to my liking, wrote my own custom CSS and theme, got frustrated with it and stopped using the tool completely.

Q2 2024: #

  • Started a blog because I wanted to document my thoughts and explorations online
  • Checked out Wordpress and 11ty
  • Setup my blog here, where you're reading this, with 11ty
  • Rolled my own theme by modifying the base theme
  • But the workflow to publish a post was too cumbersome: write -> post to a markdown IDE, check formatting, git push, wait to see if it appears ok
  • Because it was so convoluted, I kind of abandoned this blog

Q3 and Q4 2024: #

  • I setup another blog on wordpress
  • It was easy to write posts over there, so published a few posts
  • But none of the themes were simple enough, too many features and too much "battling the system" to get a simple look
  • Gave up wordpress
  • But I kept writing my thoughts and ideas on Notion and Obsidian anyway, just without publishing

Q4 Turning point #

  • End of the year, I came back to this blog, I have always loved this minimalist look
  • Thought I need to simplify the publishing flow
  • Bear notes had a workflow to publish to wordpress straight from the app: "Could I do 11ty with Obsidian? After all it's such a flexible tool"
  • Turns out, I CAN!!!!
  • Kicking myself for not thinking of this earlier

How I'm doing this now OR How to publish to your 11ty blog from Obsidian #

Screenshot of my current obsidian setup

NOTE: I'm assuming some basic Obsidian and 11ty knowledge

  • Create a blog with 11ty using any of the many methods available
  • Publish posts via Github
  • Now, open the 11ty blog as a vault in Obsidian
  • In Obsidian settings > Files and Links > Folder to create new notes : point it to content/blog
  • Add markdown frontmatter to every post from an Obsidian Template: create a template with front matter tags like this
---
title: My post
date: 2020-02-23
published: true
tags:
- Tag 1
- Tag2

---
  • Install the plugin "Templater" on Obsidian, and set it up to use this frontmatter template for every new file
  • Also install a Github Plugin on Obsidian, so you can publish with a git push via the plugin

That's it.
Now write your post, and click on the github plugin button. It pushes the code, and then onto your publishing process.