Your first seed

Welcome!

This is your first note. You’ll find it in the _notes/ directory. I recommend using Obsidian to edit Markdown files. Learn more about [[ Obsidian Setup ]], [[ Site Organization ]], and [[ Note Formatting ]].

Link syntax

To link to another note, you can use multiple syntaxes. The following four use the “double-bracket” notation (view the Markdown source file to see the underlying syntax).

• Using the note title variable: a note about cats
• Using the note’s filename: [[ cats ]]
• Using the note’s title, with a label: [[ cats|link to the note about cats using the note title ]]
• Using the note’s filename, with a label: [[ cats|link to the note about cats using the note’s filename ]]

In all cases, if the double-bracket link does not point to a valid note, the double brackets will still be shown, like this: [[ there is no note that matches this link ]].

Alternatively, you can use regular Markdown syntax for links.

Since the Web is all about HTML, you can always use plain HTML if you want, like this: This is a link to the note about cats with HTML. Don’t forget to use the .internal-link class to make sure the link is styled as an internal link (without the little arrow).

Of course, you can also link to external websites, like this: this is a link to Wikipedia. Again, you can use plain HTML if you prefer. Footnotes are also supported and will be treated like internal links.¹

Site configuration

Some behavior is configurable by tweaking the _config.yml file.

favicon: Insert an emoji and this will be generated as your site’s favicon automatically! This is only supported by browsers that recognize svg favicons, which is the majority of modern browsers.

use_html_extension: if you use a static host that doesn’t support URLs that don’t end with .html (such as Neocities or Dreamhost), leave this as true in the _config.yml file. If you configure your .htaccess to remove extensions, remember to add link metadata for canonical URLs.

open_external_links_in_new_tab: when set to true, this makes external links open in new tabs. Set to false to open all links in the current tab.

url: Set to your full web URL including https://

timezone: Set to your desired posting timezone so that the Last Modified At plugin displays the right date when you edit files.

Pages

Save static pages in the root directory in .md format. Each page needs to have the following at the top:

---
layout: page
title: About
---

Automatic bi-directional links

Notice in the “Notes mentioning this note” section that there is another note linking to this note. This is a bi-directional link, and those are automatically created when you create links to other notes.

Link previews

If you’re on a device with mouse support, try hovering your mouse on internal links to preview the notes: a note about cats.

Images and other Markdown goodies

Finally, because you have the full power of Markdown in this template, you can use regular Markdown syntax for various formatting options.

Lists work as expected:

• List element A
• List element B
• List element C

1. List element
2. List element
3. List element

If you’d like to quote other people, consider using quote blocks:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

And of course, images look great:

Code syntax highlighting

You can add code blocks with full syntax color highlighting by wrapping code snippet in triple backticks and specifying the type of the code (js, rb, sh, etc.):

// Here's a bit of JavaScript:
console.log('hello!')

# And now some Ruby
def foo(bar)
  "baz"
end

$ cat /dev/urandom | grep "the answer to life" # shell scripts look nice too

Archive

The archive page displays all notes in reverse chronological order. Design is inspired by https://maximevaillancourt.com/blog.

Archive page includes:

• Note title with link to note
• Note category
• Month and Year modified
• Excerpt

Installation

1. Create new respository from the Github Template by clicking “Use this template”
2. Customize _config.yml
3. Sign up for DeployHQ
4. Connect Github repository to DeployHQ
5. Add your server’s FTP or SSH information
6. Configure Jekyll Build Commands on DeployHQ and turn vendor caching on
7. Deploy!

Optional: [[ Obsidian Setup ]]

License

This digital garden template is free and open-source. It runs on Apache/PHP servers and the Github code is available here. This version of the code was modified by Megumi Tanaka in 2021.

Based on this digital garden template, running on Netlify, created by Maxime Vaillancourt. Buy the original creator a coffee! ☕️

Go forth, have fun, and learn new something every day! ✌️

Footnotes