Background

I knew that it was possible to backup a Hashnode blog to a GitHub repo [I use this to backup jacklinke.com with my blog repo], but I learned today that Hashnode also provides a GitHub integration that allows the opposite: Build and update a blog from the contents of a GitHub Repository.

Here is an article on their support site about how to do this. They also provide an example repository that you can clone as a starter for your blog repo.

The article you are reading right now is actually the first entry for my semi-daily Today I Learned (TIL) list. Pretty meta, right?

Caveats

Only markdown files with the .md extension will be added to your blog. This does mean you could use other types of files / extensions for other purposes (e.g. in the case that you want to include content in the repo that is not added to your Hashnode blog).

If you want to include images, a couple options are to use Hashnode's Image Uploader or upload the image to the repository and refer to its raw url, which should start with https://raw.githubusercontent.com/....

To find the raw url for an image in your GutHub repo: after committing the image, navigate to it on GitHub, and click the Download button to view the raw url.

You can find a list of valid tags to include in the Frontmatter (article metadata) here, but it has not been updated in some time. I added Issue #67 to the Hashnode Support repo, asking that they update the list. There is also a partial listing of popular & recently added tags on the Hashnode site.

Organizing with Folders

Because I intend to update this repo regularly with new content, I expect that the list of files will grow rapidly. A long list of files with no structure will become increasingly frustrating, so I'd like to be able to organize using folders

One thing I have been unable to find information on is whether Hashnode allows blog post files to be nested in folders. This initial attempt at creating a TIL entry should give me the answer to that.

Update: Yep, it works! Go ahead and use folders to organize your articles.