---
layout: post
title: "Moving to Octopress - time to customize your blog"
date: 2013-02-16 22:56
comments: true
categories: [octopress]
cover: /images/cover/avatar.png
keywords: wordpress, octopress, seo, facebook, twitter, git, guide, howto, plugins
description: Installing and customizing octopress blog
---
I've been a long-time [Wordpress](http://wordpress.com) user. Easy blogging --
want to write a new post? Click there and there and you can start writing. Too
easy and boring for hackers. Welcome to [Octopress](http://octopress.org/)
blogging (and reserve a few hours before starting blogging :) ).
It is really helpful if you know Git, HTML and
[Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown).
Installing and setup is really easy (the official guide is [here](http://octopress.org/docs/)).
What will probably take a long time is customization. You can do whatever you
want to. No more restrictive wordpress/blogger/...
0. recommendation: Learn from others. This site is open source. My [Git](http://git.cinan.sk/octopress.git/).
1. recommendation: Read this superb
[ewal](http://www.ewal.net/2012/09/08/octopress-customizations/) guide. It
describes how to remove "blog" slug in URL; how to create categories list; how to use
fancybox gallery for images in articles; how to notify Google and Bing about updating
your site and some other things.
2. recommendation: SEO fixes. [Here](http://www.yatishmehta.in/seo-for-octopress).
3. recommendation: Setup 404 pages in Nginx. [Here](http://blog.bigdinosaur.org/custom-error-pages/)
4. recommendation: Autopublish new articles on Facebook, Twitter and others
sites. Sign up for [ifttt.com](https://ifttt.com/) and create a recipe.
5. recommendation: Add [Open Graph](http://ogp.me/) meta tags to your
source/\_includes/head.html. Useful if you want to publish your posts on
Facebook. These tags will set appearance of links on Facebook (and maybe other
sites).
{% img center /images/opengraph.png Facebook and Open Graph meta tags %}
This is my source/_includes/head.html (notice "description", "keywords" and
opengraph tags on lines 30-35)":
{% codeblock source/_includes/head.html lang:html %}{% raw %}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if IEMobile 7 ]><html class="no-js iem7"><![endif]-->
<!--[if lt IE 9]><html class="no-js lte-ie8"><![endif]-->
<!--[if (gt IE 8)|(gt IEMobile 7)|!(IEMobile)|!(IE)]><!--><html class="no-js" lang="en"><!--<![endif]-->
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>{% if page.title %}{{ page.title }} - {% endif %}{{ site.title }\}</title>
<meta name="author" content="{{ site.author }}">
{% capture description %}{% if page.description %}{{ page.description }}{% else %}{{ site.description }}{% endif %}{% endcapture %}
<meta name="description" content="{{ description | strip_html | condense_spaces | truncate:150 }}">
{% capture keywords %}{% if page.keywords %}{{ page.keywords }}{% else %}{{ site.keywords }}{% endif %}{% endcapture %}
<meta name="keywords" content="{{ keywords }}">
<!-- http://t.co/dKP3o1e -->
<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True">
<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
{% capture canonical %}{{ site.url }}{% if site.permalink contains '.html' %}{{ page.url }}{% else %}{% if page.url contains site.category_dir %}/{% endif %}{{ page.url | remove:'index.html' }}{% endif %}{% endcapture %}
<link rel="canonical" href="{{ canonical }}">
<link href="{{ root_url }}/favicon.png" rel="icon">
<link href="{{ root_url }}/stylesheets/screen.css" media="screen, projection" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<script src="{{ root_url }}/javascripts/modernizr-2.0.js"></script>
<script src="{{ root_url }}/javascripts/ender.js"></script>
<script src="{{ root_url }}/javascripts/octopress.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="{{ site.subscribe_rss }}" rel="alternate" title="{{site.title}}" type="application/atom+xml">
{% include custom/head.html %}
{% include google_analytics.html %}
<meta property="og:site_name" content="{{ site.title }}">
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:url" content="{{ site.url }}{{ page.url }}">
<meta property="og:image" content="{{ site.url }}{% if page.cover %}{{ page.cover }}{% else %}{{ site.cover }}{% endif %}">
<meta property="og:title" content="{% if page.title %}{{ page.title }} - {% endif %}{{ site.title }}">
<meta property="og:description" content="{{ description }}">
</head>
{% endraw %}{% endcodeblock %}