antcooper.com

A small static blog. Markdown files go in, a website comes out. Built with Eleventy, published to GitHub Pages by GitHub Actions on every push to main.

Writing a new post

1. Add a markdown file to posts/. The filename becomes the URL, so posts/my-new-post.md is published at /blog/my-new-post/.
2. Commit and push.
3. Wait about a minute. The site rebuilds itself.

That's the whole workflow. There is nothing to run and nothing to install — which is what makes it work from an iPad in Working Copy.

The front matter

Every post starts with a block between --- lines:

---
title: Printing straight into Evernote on macOS
description: A quick tip to send a PDF straight to Evernote from the print dialog.
date: 2025-12-08
tags:
  - macOS
  - Evernote
---

The post itself starts here, in normal markdown.

Field	Required	What it does
title	yes	Heading, page title, and the link on the home page.
date	yes	YYYY-MM-DD. Controls the ordering.
description	no	The larger intro paragraph under the title. Also used for the home page summary, search results, and link previews.
tags	no	Creates /tags/macos/ etc. automatically.
image	no	A banner image shown above the post, e.g. /assets/images/photo.jpg.
imageAlt	no	Alt text describing the banner image.
redirectFrom	no	Old URLs that should forward here. Used for the micro.blog addresses.
featured	no	Set to true to pin this post as the yellow note at the top of the home page. If more than one post is marked, the newest wins.
featuredNote	no	Short line shown on that note. Falls back to description, which is usually too long for it.

Careful with # and : — if a title or description contains either, wrap the whole value in double quotes, or YAML will misread it: title: "Mapping § to # on a British keyboard"

Images

Drop them in assets/images/ and reference them from a post:

![Description of the picture](/assets/images/my-screenshot.png)
*An optional italic line directly underneath becomes the caption.*

You don't need to resize anything first. The build generates WebP versions at several widths and serves the right one, so a full-size photo straight off an iPad is fine. Keep the originals reasonable (under ~2000px wide) just to stop the repository getting heavy to clone.

Downloadable files (zips, PDFs) go in assets/files/.

Editing the site itself

I want to change...	Look in
Colours, fonts, spacing	assets/css/style.css — the tokens at the very top cover most of it
Site title, description, nav button	_data/site.js
Page structure	_layouts/base.njk, post.njk, page.njk
The home page listing	index.njk
How many posts per page	size: 3 in index.njk's front matter
About text	pages/about.md
Build behaviour	eleventy.config.js

Running it locally (optional — Mac only)

npm install
npm start

Then open http://localhost:8080. It reloads as you save.

To do a one-off production build into _site/:

npm run build

How publishing works

.github/workflows/deploy.yml runs on every push to main: it installs dependencies, runs the Eleventy build, and uploads _site/ to GitHub Pages. If a build ever fails, the previous version of the site stays up and the Actions tab will show what went wrong.

Going live on antcooper.com

The site currently publishes to https://antcooper.github.io/. antcooper.com still points at micro.blog, and nothing here affects it until you change DNS.

The custom domain is deliberately not set yet: as soon as GitHub Pages knows about it, the github.io address starts redirecting there — which would leave you unable to preview. So the switch is one step, done when you're ready:

1. At your DNS provider, point antcooper.com at GitHub Pages. Four A records on the apex:

   185.199.108.153
   185.199.109.153
   185.199.110.153
   185.199.111.153
   

   And a CNAME for www pointing to antcooper.github.io.

2. Add a file called CNAME in the root of this repository containing exactly:

   antcooper.com
   

   Commit and push it. The build already knows to copy that file through, and GitHub Pages picks up the domain from it.

3. In the repo's Settings → Pages, tick Enforce HTTPS once the certificate has been issued (usually within an hour).

Until step 2 happens, antcooper.github.io serves the site normally.

URLs and redirects

Posts live at /blog/<filename>/. The old micro.blog addresses (/2025/12/08/printing-straight-into-evernote-on.html) still work: each post lists them under redirectFrom, and the build generates a small forwarding page for each one. Feeds stayed where they were, at /feed.xml and /feed.json, so existing subscribers don't notice the move.