Initializing and maintaining this blog

I always have some kind of uncommitted README file laying around with notes about how I created and maintain this site, so I figured, why not turn it into a post?

Installing & Updating

Installation followed the Serene usage guide found here: USAGE.md

zola init devedge.github.io && cd $_
git init
git submodule add -b latest https://github.com/isunjn/serene.git themes/serene

To update, the Update section covers how to pick up the latest version of the theme:

git submodule update --remote themes/serene

The local environment can be previewed by running the zola webserver:

zola serve

Useful Locations

Posts are under: content/posts/

Assets are stored under static/assets/, and post-specific assets are stored in a subfolder that matches the page name. Currently, this is manually created.

New pages are new directories under content/, and have an _index.md file that defines the home page.

Theme files can be modified/overwritten by placing a duplicate file under the root site's equivalent directory. For example, the _base.html file from the Serene theme was overwritten to adjust the favicon names. This is originally under themes/serene/templates/_base.html, so the modified version was copied from there and placed under templates/_base.html.

Creating New Posts

Creating a new post is super simple - just create a new markdown file under content/posts/ with the following:

+++
title = "Post title"
date = "2026-07-18 14:20:33"

[taxonomies]
tags = ["tag1", "tag2"]
+++

..._Markdown content here_...

Given how simple this is, I have 2 scripts to handle this, new-post.sh & update-post-date.sh.

First, create a new Git branch:

git switch --create initializing-and-maintaining-blog

Create the new post with:

$ ./new-post.sh "Initializing and maintaining this blog"
Slug: initializing-and-maintaining-this-blog
Path: content/posts/initializing-and-maintaining-this-blog.md

and then begin writing/committing work to this file in this branch.

Once the post is complete and ready to be merged into master, run and commit:

./update-post-date.sh content/posts/initializing-and-maintaining-this-blog.md

• The new-post.sh script generates a url-safe slug & creates the draft post with the slug as the filename.
• The update-post-date.sh script updates the placeholder draft date of 9999-01-01 00:00:00 to the current date.

Usually, I'll squash all the commit in the branch before merging it. To squash the last 4 commits:

git rebase -i HEAD~4

In the rebase popup, set the topmost commit as pick and all the following ones as squashes. Once written, it will pop up again with all the previous commit messages, which can be removed & replaced with a single commit line.

If this was done locally, a merge+push will work fine. However, if the rebase is done to a commit that has already been pushed to the remote master, the push needs to be forced:

git push --force

Merge the branch into master and push to origin with:

git checkout master
git merge initializing-and-maintaining-blog
git push

Miscellaneous

These are a few Git specific situations that commonly happen.

Updating a branch with the latest from master

If there are new modifications to master that need to be applied to a current branch, rebase it off of master with:

git checkout initializing-and-maintaining-blog
git rebase master initializing-and-maintaining-blog

Stashing work

Stashing is useful when quickly jumping branches, where a commit would be too much.

git add .
git stash push --message "description"

The --all command also includes ignored items, which can break the zola precompiled data under public/. The --include-untracked is more likely to be useful.

Re-apply with:

git stash pop stash@{0}