"Obsidian+Github Pages" for digital gardeners?

Recently I came across a project called “Foam Bubble” , which uses VSCode and Github Pages to mimick a Roam-like user experience.

And I’m thinking, what if there is a way to combine Obsidian+Githubpages for digital gardener to easily publish their evergreen notes?

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Just go ahead and put your Vault Folder into a Github repo and then push it out via GH Pages, an SSG on Netlify or Vercel, or whatever you want.

All my Obsidian Vaults are private GitHub repos and I also use Foam and work in VSCode all day. I only use Obsidian for viewing the Graph, backlinks, etc. as it’s UX is currently better than Foam.

Do the [[]] links work if you do that? I thought Github doesn’t support the [[]] links.

I’m not tech savvy enough to understand what you mean here. Are you saying that we could, as of now, easily host a duplicate of our Obsidian notes/graph through Github Pages or another hosting service? If so, would you mind clarifying the steps for a fool like me?

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Not yet, at least not that I know of, that’s why I’m presenting this idea here, hopefully some tech genius can come up with a solution to combine Obsidian vault with Github pages or some sort of static site generator for easy publishing purposes.

Yeah, I was replying to ShaneRobinson - I can’t tell if he has a solution or not. I would love this sort of functionality - probably in my top 5 desired features.

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Oh… Yeah. You’re correct that MediaWiki-style [[]] links don’t work or convert to GHPages or an SSG (like 11ty, Hugo, etc…)

I don’t use [[]] links in Obsidian. I use standard Markdown [text](link) format which works perfectly in Obsidian. And allows me to “lable” the link anything I want instead of whatever the File Name is.

I also have TextExpander quick keys that generate an entire set of FrontMatter Keys and Values at the top of each file. Again, I’m working mostly in VSCode and only use Obsidian for viewing the Graph or backlinks…and with FOAM there’s less round-tripping between VSCode and Obsidian.

For me, I’m really not concerned about the Graph or backlinks when I’m working/writing.

My thinking/process is basically:

  1. In order to maintain as much open format and interoperability in the future, stick to content and file format standards.
  2. For the few internal/external links in each document, it’s not that much of an inconvenience (especially with quick keys) to use standard [text](link) syntax. This ensures I can serve any .MD file I have with any SSG and/or use any standard Markdown converter now and in the future. And when I’ve finished the document, I do have to manually at Tags to the Frontmatter “tags” array. Adds 2-3 seconds per tag, but guarantees I’ll have taxonomy connections between files when published through an SSG.
  3. Placing Frontmatter at the top of each file also guarantees future interoperability, conversion, and hosting via SSG. Using TextExpander makes this super easy and fast.

It’s that old tradeoff of simply changing a few workflow elements (using [text](link) instead of [[]] for example) to benefit from exponentially more interoperability.

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Hi… Yeah. Just replied to @jarodise that my solution is to use standard Markdown [text](link) syntax rather than MediaWiki [[]] syntax. Solves all the problems of not being able to parse MediaWiki links IF you want to someday publish via GHP, SSG, or just maintain interoperable standards.

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Thanks for sharing, really appreciate it!

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You could use plugins for converting links in some static site generators like
Gatsby (https://github.com/aravindballa/gatsby-theme-andy) or Jekyll (Simply Jekyll Theme) https://simply-jekyll.netlify.app/posts/introduction-to-simply-jekyll

Here you could find even more resources https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners

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Thanks - still, its an extra step

@ShaneRobinson Excuse the direct ping, but you seem pretty knowledgeable about this… would you mind looking at my question here: Understanding digital garden creation with Obsidian

Many thanks!

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Foam discusses the issues directly, which affect them more because of the Github linkage. Has found no solution, but switched from md to wiki syntax because of the superior ergonomics.


I created a template, eleventy-garden, with Obsidian in mind. It does work with wiki-style links (ie. [[filename]]).

The only hitch I see is the GitHub piece. Would the user create an account & repo themselves? Once you’re doing that, why not just push to GitHub yourself?

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It would be great if a vault or a part of the vault could be easily published on the web. This could potentially be very simple through e.g. GitHub Pages, which has templating mechanisms that turn markdown into HTML (https://pages.github.com/).

Unfortunately, my first test of doing this with the current markdown generated by Obsidian failed:


resulted in

The link is broken and the image is not shown. I assume this is because of a mismatch in markdown syntax between Obsidian and GitHub pages; also GitHub pages cannot know the Obsidian setting for the folder in which file attachments are located.

It would be great to have a tutorial, export script or other helpful material for turning Obsidian content into web pages!

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This is a planned feature and well advertized in the homepage as part of the services that will be offered!

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Oops. Okay, eagerly waiting for the release that will introduce that feature! :slight_smile:

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Yes! They announced this “publishing mode” was going to be a feature time ago, but still haven’t heard anything about it.
So, I also tried to share my notes on the web (as a public blog). But did fail, too :frowning:
Hope Obsidian have this as a high priority on their roadmap, so we can publish online directly with Obsidian and forget about exporting every note and reformatting to a time-consuming blogging platform.

This one is a high priority for me too! I would also like

  1. to know the licensing implications of this, if I use this feature for example to generate documentation for my business but technically obsidian itself is not used by the business?

  2. to just export the markdown files as is, except replacing all [[page links]] with relative urls at time of export (so that it can be ingested by jekyll or the like)

  3. to know where i can follow the roadmap of this feature more closely (beyond the “long-term” ticket item existing in the trello board)

  4. to be able to contribute to this plugin, static site content generation from markdown files is something i have many opinions about :slight_smile:

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I spent 4 hours trying to figure this out on my own today using Hexo, Hugo, Harp, and Ghost, with no success.

I don’t need a full-fledged document management system, I just want to publish my notes to Github pages (or a lightweight, minimalist static site generator) so others can browse it.

Is the full “Publishing” feature going to be only github pages or have multiple publishing options?

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