Zamansky 68: Tramp and Org-publish

Mike Zamansky is back with another video in his Using Emacs Series. This video discusses maintaining a simple Web site with Emacs and Org-mode. Usually when I write about this sort of thing, it’s in the context of publishing to a blog. Zamansky’s need is a bit different. He has a couple of Web sites he maintains that support some of his programs at Hunter College. These are simple sites that Zamansky had been writing directly in HTML by logging into the host machine and editing the file in situ.

Then he realized that rather than logging onto the host machine to edit the files, he could use Tramp and do his editing from the comfort of his own environment. That’s already an improvement but then he wondered why he was going through the pain of writing in HTML when we could write in Org-mode and export to HTML. The default look of the HTML exported from Org isn’t very pretty but it’s easy to disable the default CSS and add your own. You can even embed custom CSS in the Org source file if you need something special for that page.

Zamansky’s final realization was that rather than export to HTML and then transfer the HTML to the host machine, he could simply use Org-publish and have the whole process automated. All he needed to do was write the Org source and call Org-publish to export it to HTML and transfer it to the host machine. His solution is much like Sachin Patil’s that I wrote about last Friday. It’s a nice work flow that eliminates the boring rote work and lets him concentrate on the site’s content.

Follow the link to the video for more details on his set up and how he arrived at his solution. The video runs 16 minutes, 20 seconds so plan accordingly.

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