Start up a new site auto-magically with GitHub Codespaces

Work with site preview using the GitHub Codespaces remote dev environment

This project is configured to work with Codespaces. This allows you work on variations of the site in a remote dev environment in your browser so you can try things out without publishing directly to the live, main branch.

To use this option, select Open in a codespace from the Use this template menu button.

For more information, see the GitHub documentation.

Getting plainer and GitHubbier

While on a plane ride, I started thinking about how I could further simplify and improve this project. Here's what I did:

• Removed HTML5 Boilerplate. As browsers have continued to improve and IE11 is now gone, there seems to less of a need for CSS infrastructure just to handle browser differences. So I ditched all the remnants of HTML5 Boilerplate to just go with straight Primer CSS, plus an empty file to add any necessary customizations.
• Removed Google Analytics. This may have been part of HTML5BP, but calling it out as a separate change. It seems unnecessary for this project, and so it further simplifies the config file and default layout.
• Added a local copy of Primer CSS. Using the hosted version ensures you're always using the latest release, but it's nice to have a local copy as well to reduce dependencies (and the need for an internet connection if you're working locally).
• Made some layout improvements. Instead of hard coding utility classes for the body and main elements, they're now set up to work as defaults. So they don't clutter up the content files to work out of the box, but you can override them or cancel them out using front matter instead of messing with the layout. I also renamed the layout to default so the only front matter you really need is a page title.

Since this release includes major changes and deletions to the some of the core files, I'm calling this v.2.0.

Enjoy! 🥳

Open with Gitpod

Gitpod is a cloud-based development environment that allows you to work with code and static site compilers without having to install software on your local machine.

For this release, I configured this repo to work with Gitpod.

To get started:

1. Create a copy of the repo template.
2. Log into Gitpod using your GitHub account.
3. Open a new workspace using this Gitpod link.

What happens next:

• An instance of the VS Code text editor opens in your browser.
• You may see some things happening in the Terminal panel.
• When it's finished, you'll see a message that says Server running... press ctrl-c to stop. in the Terminal panel.
• Your browser may block the pop-up that tries to open.
• If you don't see the live site, command-click the URL on this line in the Terminal panel: Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000

Launch

This project builds on some previous tinkering, but I finally pulled it all together in a repo template that can more easily be reused. Simply press Use this template to spin up a site and start creating pages. You can don't even have to install or build locally.