Pubsidian - FREE and ELEGANT obsidian-publish alternative

pubsidian


Hey there,

Obsidian-publish is awesome. But, for a student with zero income source like me, the 8$/ month price tag isn’t. I have tried to implement the free alternatives out there, but all of them are either too complicated or not aesthetically pleasing. Oh, and all of them lack a crucial feature i.e Graph View. That’s why I have tried to create a free alternative of Obsidian-publish to showcase your notes. Here’s my attempt. I am attaching a few snapshots below…

Light mode:

Dark mode:

Graphview:

Side-by-side comparison with Obsidian


Tell me what you think. Any suggestion/ contribution is highly appreciable.

Structure:

If you love my project, you can :star: it on github.

Thank you. :smiley:

Quick-start guide

Right now, I’m super excited :star_struck: to announce that, you can now convert entire obsidian notes, with just a single click. Introducing Pubsidian Convert GUI v1.0 :tada::tada::tada:

  • STEP-1: CONVERSION:

    • Download PubsidianConverter1.0alpha.exe
    • Copy and Paste this application to the obsidian directory, [i.e where your notes (.md) are stored.]
    • Simply double-click to RUN PubsidianConverter1.0alpha.exe
    • You will see a window, something like this:
    • Enter your name (It will be reflected as ***'S NOTEBOOK in your pubsidian website) and hit Convert to Pubsidian. Now, a pop-up window will arrive. Select the Attachment folder, i.e., where the images, used inside your obsidian notes are stored from the pop-up window.
    • After running successfully, you’ll get an OUTPUT directory, containing three elements: index.html,data.json and pages directory.
  • STEP-2: HOSTING:

    • Drag and drop your OUTPUT directory in netlify

Voila!! :partying_face::partying_face: your site is online.

Roadmap for future updates

  • [x] Auto-generated internal navigation. (ver 2.0)
  • [x] One-click convert - convert and host your obsidian notes just with a click. (ver 3.0)
  • [x] Latex rendering. (ver 3.2)
  • [ ] Adding content search and tags.
  • [ ] Theme supports and other customization.

Disclaimer

  • After thorough testing, I have found some bugs during the conversion.
  1. ![[Pasted Images]] are not converted properly. However, ![Image](image link) shows no problem at all. [FIXED]
    2.Markdown tables are also facing problems during conversion. [FIXED]
3. Multiple directories are also facing some problems.

I’m working on it. Meanwhile, if you have any other bug/issue please put it in the issues.

If you have any ideas/suggestions, please put them in the comment section.

If you want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee.

Thank you :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

26 Likes

I only looked at your site for a bit, but it looks perfectly decent. The graph view was there, if via the side button slide-out, but it works well. Considering you are saving ~$100/year, I would say it looks great. Wishing you the best.

I did see this work around for publishing to a blog with another free md editor. Of course, you have to have a blog and I suspect that would cost as well to be able to use such functionality.

Personally, I have a website and I am going to wait for the Obsidian wordpress plugin. I had a vision for doing this same type of distributed wiki-like publishing on my site, but before finding Obsidian it was going to be very labor intensive to link everything.

1 Like

Hi! Thanks a lot for your feedback. I’m currently working on a script so that, anyone can transfer their notes to a blog, just with a click.
I had also thought about the WordPress integration, but since both WordPress CMS and Obsidian are closed source, the process would be complex, tedious, and of questionable efficiency.

That’s why I’m working on this project so that fellow users can be benefitted from this. Let’s see how far I can go.

#Finger-Crossed.

4 Likes

You should work on reading the standard Obsidian CSS file and you will beat the Obsidian publish!

The website should use simple .md files. To generate the website.

1 Like

Hi,

It seems good work, but how I see it lacks full text search.
That would be very important.
Füles

This is so cool. Right now I use method described here wpsync – Markdown to WP – mkaz.blog and goodpress
GitHub - maelle/goodpress: WIP!! R Package to Write Posts from R Markdown to Wordpress
Although goodpress is for r markdown. Or one could first convert the markdown to html and then post it to wordpress

1 Like

Tried to implement that. But the main problem is Obsidian uses wikilinks instead of conventional mdlinks. That’s why it requires separate markdown parser. If anyone helps me in that part, I don’t have any problem to use .md file with the official obsidian-css to build a website.

1 Like

Thanks a lot.

So, far I have only enabled search features to find the name of the notes. Content search and tagging will be introduced in the upcoming build.

As I have mentioned earlier, obsidian uses wiki-links, that’s why it’s bit more cumbersome to convert it to html.

we are waiting for it :slight_smile:
Füles

You two should talk Perlite - publish your Notes to your own Web Server

1 Like

I create a python script to convert wiki links to markdown standard links : obsidian-share/share.py at master · Mara-Li/obsidian-share · GitHub

It’s the convertlink function (l. 153).

Moreover, if you want to take some part of my script I will be happy! My project is to simply share some obsidian note so, a blog that copy totally obsidian plus would be super cool!

5 Likes

Thank you so much. I will definitely look into your code. :hugs:
Meanwhile, please feel free to optimize/ modify/ upgrade my code, especially the “md2html” function (line no. 70). Thanks in advance. :smiley:

What do you mean by “Full text search” ? :thinking:

Great work. Thanks for your effort. I’m curious if there is an option to hide the acknowledgement at footer? (the “Created using Pubsidian” part)

@bryan00 Yes definitely :full_moon_with_face: Just remove data.js script from the index.html. But, in that case, you have to code the navigation list manually :sweat_smile:

1 Like

@Amlan: great stuff, well done, your output looks very professional too, nothing to be ashamed of, something to be proud of. :+1:

The netlify link in your OP is dead.

1 Like

@Vagabond: full text search means it search in the contents of the notes too, instead of just the note titles.

@Klaas Thank you so much for your kind words. I’ve updated the netlify link as well as the instructions to convert obsidian notes. Feel free to inform me if you have any query/ suggestion. :smiley: