Eric Walker

Once I had created the template so I could get a better way to have things display on my Obsidian Publish site I next zeroed in on how to quickly create a note in the right place using the format I created. Because a I do make a lot of quick posts in my real blogging/journaling setup so it would be nice to put it in the right place in the right format that can just be tweaked sligtly to allow for multiple entries. That is where a previously installed plugin called Periodic Notes helped solve this. I gave this plugin a try earlier when using it for weekly notes but I never really used it so I just sat. However, I realized that how I configured that I could use their Daily Notes portion to modify it as you see below to have a new file created in the right place and then using the template I created it would have the right structure to show up on my site correctly.

This really does seem to give some promise to the overall using Obsidian to create online posts quickly if or at least if anything in a place they might want after a structure is created. I will say even if/once I abandon this little project with Obsidian Publish I might have to start using this Daily Notes plugin as all of my Running posts on Micro.blog have started in Obsidian since May of 2024. I have just found it easier for me to write there and then using Micro.Publish (also using Multimedia Uploaderto get the picture I take with it) get it to get it posted to my site with no distractions.

For more on that I wrote about my Writing with Obsidian for Micro.blog back in May as well.

The more I have been using Obsidian as part of trying out Obsidian Publish, I actually think it could fit even more of just my everyday workflow and quite possibly replace how I use DayOne today. I primarily use DayOne as a notebook to capture a lot of different things, thoughts, notes, places, and things my kids have made or done. I guess as DayOnes purpose it is a digital journal that keeps both public things from my micro.blog site as well as personal things or things I just don’t share. One of my favorite things about DayOne that currently can not easilsy be replaced in Obsidian is the ability to capture location data when a note is created or it is updated when you add a photo. I have seen some articles and support pages having this as a request but I haven’t really found anything that will work that is just using a simple plugin. I think if Obsidian had a plugins that did this well or location data was built into the main program I would have to take an even closer look to just have Obsidian and cut out other note taking apps.

Go figure my first time ever making a Template in Obsidian is when I decided to go a little further in this Obsidian Publish and figured out a way to “automate” some features as well as help keep things organized. So this is what I have come up with so far.

---
permalink: {{date:YYYY}}/{{date:MM}}/{{date:DD}}/post-title
tags: 
date: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}
publish: "false"
---

The permalink feature is really nice as this also helped solve a problem I had where I had to keep everything in the Vault root. Now as long as you are going to use Permalinks you can kind of put it anywhere.

Now that I pretty much have a working example of Obsidian Publish going and have changed around some of the settings and CSS even to make it look like it is right now here are my initial thoughts:

+ Plus

• I actually really like having this right inside where I have been taking notes and other things that I can quickly publish something from that images and all with no fuss, the note just shows up online.
• You are able to point your own domain or subdomain to Obsidian Publish. I did it the easy way by using Cloudflare since that was their example as I couldn’t quickly tell the easiest path with my own provider but I am sure there is a way. Seems to work fine with the Free version of Cloudflare so no issues.
• Customize the look and feel, I just left it as default right away and they have a couple simple things you can change right in the Obsidian Publish screen. There is more advanced ways to do it as well modifying CSS and after I gave it a go I did start searching GITHub and found a handful of sites that published their CSS as a good example to follow and use. Ultimatly, after all of my work creating my own publish.css I then found Minimal.Guide had a good simple example of a Dracula theme (and others) I wish I would have found earlier.

- Minus

• Lack of RSS support, yes there is an RSS link for this site but there is not really any of the information you would want like date another things. It is really just a breakdown of note titles from what I can tell.
• You have to keep it in the root of your Obsidian Vault, or if you don’t you will leave you website pointing to /folder/notes. This would not be a huge deal if I used this whole Vault for just my Obsidian Publish site but the benefits I would enjoy keeping is being able to just have all things in one spot and then one Folder that was really a mirror of my site which I can move things in and out of. There is some chatter about in in the Forum so maybe this will change someday but I get why it probably is the way it is right now.
• Modify the CSS of the site is possible by use of the publish.css file you need to create in the root of your site, but you can’t edit it in Obsidian. So you it is burried in your vault system folder and you have to modify it there but then still go though the publish commands in obsidian to get it updated. Slightly clunky when you are testing things out but after you get it set I understand how then it is just in the background.

Below are a couple of Sites using Obsidian Publish I stumbled upon as I was figuring things out and they also have their publish.css and publish.js on GitHub: