Publish to Jekyll web site from mobile

I do not have regular access to the notebook any more because of war.

air alert notification

However I’d like to keep posting some notes and make them available online rather than waiting for vacation to get to the notebook and run generator.

Vercel has free hosting plan for static personal web sites. I’m using it as social media alternative.

Building pages localy

So I had Vercel CI/CD pipeline established that copies generated html files. Html files had been generated locally on my notebook. Then I had to push generated html files to Github, Vercel CI pipeline fires and updates the hosting environment.

Building pages by CI/CD pipeline

Now it works almost the same but publishing pipeline is activated by .md files modification.

Vercel pipeline generates html sources for the whole web site by creating Jekyll environment and building html sources.

Now i can use Vercel’s environments feature. A staging environment is created by a push to any branch.

staging environment

The production environment is updated by the main branch modification.

production environment

Mobile phone prerequisites

To make .md files modifications I have installed

  • Termux terminal application for Android. Works like *nix emulator, can have CLI utilities (like git) installed via package system. Termux is outdated at Google Play market and has to be downloaded manually.
  • Text file editor to adjust .md files. I had bought QuickEdit+ but it can be any editor you like. QuickEdit+ can render .md and is not expensive.

That is how can I update Jekyll powered blog within edits made on my mobile.

Generic flow

Publishing process is made by several steps:

  • update file in the git reposotory on phone
  • push changes to GitHub
  • Vercel watches for repository changes and starts build pipeline if any modification was made
  • pipeline creates Jekyll build environment and generates html static pages from .md
  • site is available online (as staging or production)

Seems I need light and small bluetooth keyboard for field notes :-)