Creating a Technical Article Garden with Obsidian Publish

Introduction

A technical article garden is a collection of interconnected notes and articles that form a knowledge base. It's a great way to share your technical expertise and create a valuable resource for others. Obsidian Publish is a powerful tool for creating and publishing such a garden. It allows you to create a public-facing website from your Obsidian vault, making it easy to share your notes and articles with the world.

This article explains how to set up Obsidian Publish for technical documentation and create an interconnected knowledge base that grows over time.

Setting up Obsidian Publish

Once you have those, you can follow these steps to set up your article garden:

1. Create an Obsidian vault: If you don't already have one, create a new Obsidian vault for your article garden.
2. Enable Obsidian Publish: In Obsidian, go to Settings > Core plugins and enable the "Publish" plugin.
3. Connect to Obsidian Publish: Click the "Publish changes" button in the ribbon. This will open the Obsidian Publish interface.
4. Choose a site name: Enter a name for your site. This will be used as the subdomain for your Obsidian Publish site (e.g., yourname.obsidian.md).
5. Select notes to publish: Choose the notes you want to include in your article garden. You can select individual notes or entire folders.
6. Publish your site: Click the "Publish" button to publish your site.

Custom Domain Setup

You can also set up a custom domain for your Obsidian Publish site. To do this, you'll need to:

Creating Content

The key to creating a successful technical article garden is to create high-quality, interconnected content. Here are some tips for creating content in Obsidian:

• Use Markdown: Obsidian uses Markdown for formatting, so you can use standard Markdown syntax to create headings, lists, links, and more.
• Create internal links: Use internal links to connect your notes and articles. This is what makes your article garden a garden, rather than just a collection of individual articles. To create an internal link, use the note name syntax.
• Use tags: Use tags to categorize your notes and articles. This makes it easier for readers to find related content. To add a tag, use the #tagname syntax.
• Use images and other media: Add images, videos, and other media to make your articles more engaging.
• Keep it concise: Technical articles should be clear, concise, and easy to understand.

Example of Internal Linking

Here's how to link to another-note in your vault.
You can also use custom link text.

Customizing the Appearance

Obsidian Publish allows you to customize the appearance of your site using CSS. You can add custom CSS rules to change the colors, fonts, layout, and more. To add custom CSS, create a file named obsidian.css in the root of your Obsidian vault. Obsidian Publish will automatically load this file and apply the CSS rules to your site.

Here are some examples of CSS rules you can use to customize your site:

/* Change the background color */
body {
  background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

/* Change the font */
body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
}

/* Change the heading colors */
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  color: #333;
}

Terminal Commands for CSS Validation

If you want to validate your CSS, you can use the following command:

npx stylelint obsidian.css

Maintaining the Garden

A technical article garden is a living document that should be maintained and grown over time. Here are some tips for maintaining your article garden:

Technical Implementation Details

Performance Considerations

Conclusion

Obsidian Publish is a great tool for creating a technical article garden. It's easy to set up, allows you to create interconnected content, and provides a way to customize the appearance of your site. By following the tips in this article, you can create a valuable resource for others and share your technical expertise with the world.

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About the Author: Justin Johnson builds AI systems and writes about practical AI development.

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